Page 1280 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 2021
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workers and others who do their best to provide stability to these young people in the present and give them hope for the future. The care and protection system is for children and young people who have been removed from their birth families. In the ACT, about 30 per cent of these kids are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Those who then exit out of home care are known as care leavers. Some of these young people, of course, go back to their birth families; many, however, spend a large amount of their lives in foster, kinship and residential care. And some of them will age out of the system as adults.
A vast body of literature documents the difficulties faced by many young people who transition to independence after having grown up in out of home care. Across the world, care leavers are at increased risk for homelessness, failure to complete school, lack of further education or training, unemployment, contact with the criminal justice system, poor health, poor mental health, substance abuse, violence and poverty. Research in Australia suggests that 50 per cent of care leavers end up either homeless, in jail or as new parents within 12 months. According to a Swinburne University survey, almost two thirds of homeless youth, nationwide, are care leavers. This disadvantage has several interconnected contributing factors. Many children in care and protection have a history of abuse or neglect, increasing the risks.
At the same time, removal from birth families can disrupt the traditional support structures, including extended family, friends and community. Those structures help reduce such risks. In addition, the process of transitioning to adulthood can be very different for care leavers, leaving them especially vulnerable. As we have personally experienced, there is no magical point at which a young person becomes fully independent. Instead, it takes a gradual, natural process; each child’s pathway is unique. This process occurs best in a safe, stable environment that includes people who support the young person through what can often be a bumpy and sometimes strange journey.
It should be no surprise, then, that according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 43.4 per cent of those aged between 20 and 24 still live with their parents. In contrast, care and protection orders in the ACT, as in other jurisdictions, end when the young person becomes an adult at age 18. Historically, this has resulted in abrupt exits from out of home care. This unnatural transition has contributed in a big way to the negative outcomes that many care leavers experience. In short, it simply does not replicate the natural transition process experienced by young people who grow up in a secure home, where they can gradually enter adulthood and assume full independence, supported by one or both parents.
Aware of this reality, in 2012 the ACT government started providing a level of support for care leavers up to the age of 25. This included a small team of specialist case workers and brokerage funding to assist care leavers with one-off expenses. Two years later, however, when the government introduced its current strategy, it was clear that this service needed to be enhanced, so an extended continuum of care for care leavers up to 21 years of age was introduced. This new approach included the possibility of a small subsidy for foster and kindship carers who are willing and able to continue to care for a young person after the age of 18, as long as a number of eligibility criteria can be met. Currently, this subsidy is not quite two-thirds of what a
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