Berry Street Web Docs Annual Report 2016 | Page 29

Providing Safe Homes

FOSTER & KINSHIP

CARE
When children can’t live safely with
their parents, the next preference is
for them to live with extended family.
However, this isn’t always possible,
so foster care (volunteers who
take children into their homes
and hearts), is a critical plank
in responding to child abuse
and neglect.
We have been advocating for
resources to strengthen foster care
for many years. In the lead up to the
last State Election, together with
the Foster Care Association
of Victoria, we ran the Save Foster
Care Campaign.
Following Anita Pell’s Churchill
Fellowship (Senior Advisor, Home
Based Care) in 2009, we invested
our funds to build our pool of foster
carers and ensure they have the
resources and support they need to
continue providing the care these
children so desperately need.
While Victoria as a whole
continues to lose more foster
carers than it gains, we have
built our own foster care pool
from 292 in 2009/10 to 519
2015/16. We have done this
through investing our own
funds in promoting the need
for, and value of, foster care to
attract more people and then
ensuring they have the
support they need.

ANNUAL REPORT 2016

While all our programs generally
operate above their funded
performance targets, we still
couldn’t meet demand, e.g. in
Shepparton, referrals doubled to
1,423 and we were only able to
successfully match one third of
these children because we didn’t
have any carers available.

The holiday programs,
playgroups, carer reward and
recognition days and support
groups we run
The Icare2 training we developed
and run for the biological children
in foster families

BEYOND THE CALL...
SOME OF THE OTHER
HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
Our 651 wonderful foster and
kinship carers providing a home
for 1,353 children and young
people, 200 more than last year
Recruiting and accrediting
118 new foster carers
2XUWHUUL̬FIRVWHUFDUHFDPSV
where 119 children & young
people and 80 foster carers from
Hume and the North enjoyed a
week’s beach holiday
Being asked by the Department
of Health and Human Services to
take over a number of children
and foster carers when another
agency closed

When 16 year old Tracey had
her baby early, it was suggested
that she could return to the
residential home which had
been her home for the last
three years. This wouldn’t
have been a good option for
her or her baby. So one of our
ZRQGHUIXOIRVWHUFDUHUVR̫HUHG
to take both mum and baby.
)RUWKH̬UVWWLPHLQKHUOLIH
Tracey experienced what good
mothering was and realised that
she couldn’t provide the fulltime care her baby needed.

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