Question details

(1865) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Children, and the action I seek is for her to increase the supports provided to foster and kinship carers. If you talk to almost any carer, frontline worker or child with an experience of the out-of-home care system, they all agree on one thing: that Victoria’s child protection system is broken. We have seen children die after being referred dozens of times to a system that closes their cases without helping them. We have seen children being criminalised, exposed to drugs or groomed in state residential care units that were meant to keep them safe. We see a system that has become such a pipeline to youth crime that a recent report showed every child in youth justice for offending under 14 was already known to child protection.

Foster, kinship and permanent carers have told me that they are undersupported, underappreciated and burning out, and I am here to fight for them. Carers endure enormous financial, emotional and physical cost, all while feeling the system is against them. Their allowances do not come close to covering what a child needs, which is why I have argued in the Parliament many times that we must lift them. In the six years to 2024–25, Victoria lost a net 1500 accredited foster carers, the sharpest fall of any state, leaving just 1550 active foster households. Under Labor, carers of 10, 20, 30 years are walking away from the system because they are treated so poorly. If we want to actually put children’s best interests first, that means supporting the families that open their homes and hearts to them.

Today I want to say clearly to every foster, kinship and permanent carer: a Liberal and Nationals government will treat you with respect. We will ensure carers feel heard, appreciated and have a real voice in the system and in decisions affecting children in their care. Upon coming to government we will immediately create a new carer and volunteer workforce strategy for child protection, which will place foster, kinship and permanent carers’ voices at the heart of future planning. We will also increase the practical support available to carers by expanding their care support help desk and will bring in real transparency and clarity to the allowance system, which has been applied unfairly and inconsistently.

We will also lead a wholesale reform of the system, starting by commissioning an independent review of the child protection system to identify what reform must look like. The review will span prevention, early intervention, out-of-home care and care allowances and support transition from care and more, ensuring carers’ voices are heard and confronting why past recommendations have been ignored rather than implemented. This review will not just look back, it will look forward, examining better models of care used successfully in other jurisdictions, such as professional foster care, and will commit to trialling those models that the evidence supports. We must do better for our most vulnerable children.