03/09/2020

The Carer Recruitment and Retention Taskforce welcomed new members KWY and InComPro at their most recent meeting in early August.

Along with Aboriginal Family Support Services, these Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations were recently selected as the successful providers of a new Kinship Carer Support Program, and will play an important role in supporting kinship carers of Aboriginal children and young moving forward.

The taskforce discussed the results from its recent information sharing project, with different agencies taking slightly different approaches to support the success of new placements. A common theme was the positive use of photos to help children and young people become familiar with members of the carer household, pets and their bedroom, giving the child a sense of the carer and their new environment. Service providers are developing information about carer families during the assessment and approval phase, so that it is ready on standby and can be given to children and young people even when placements occur at short notice (such as in emergency situations).

Training and the credentialing of carers was also on the taskforce agenda to explore broadly. Very early work is underway to investigate the possibility of whether a registered training provider could recognise carer competencies through a Recognition of Prior Learning process.

Taskforce members were thanked for participating in the recent 4-week foster care recruitment campaign, which saw positive engagement rates and drove significant traffic to the foster care website. In addition, agency feedback indicated an increase in enquiries during the campaign period. As a result of the campaign, DCP plans to review the current foster care quiz and identify opportunities to improve the user journey and encourage more people to contact foster care agencies.