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Foster care experts say there needs to be more support for families reuniting with children following the death of an 8-month-old less than three days after she was returned to her biological parents.
Families reuniting with their biological children need better support, foster care experts say. Their comments come after the ABC revealed an 8-month-old baby girl died less than three days after being returned to her biological parents.
Children and Family Services chief executive Wendy Sturgess says more work with parents needs to be done if changes in reunification legislation are to be effective. Foster care experts say there needs to be more support for families reuniting with children following the death of an 8-month-old less than three days after she was returned to her biological parents.
Victorian foster carer Sasha*, whose name has been changed for legal reasons, said a six-year-old girl under her care since she was a baby had been "re-traumatised" by court-ordered visitations. A reunification order is made with the goal of eventually returning the child to their biological parent. The Department of Family, Fairness and Housing says the aim of a family reunification order is to safely return a child to the care of their parents.
"Emma used to see her mum twice a week … but she wouldn't turn up to half those sessions," Sasha said. "That really stressed Emma out … I would pick up from daycare, go and wait … and she wouldn't turn up … Emma was distraught. " Sasha said Emma was "re-traumatised" on the occasions when she did see her biological mother, who was unwell and abusive.
"It takes a couple of weeks to settle her down after … she wets the bed and she sucks her fingers," Sasha said. Previous Victorian legislation stated that once a child was put into out-of-home care, biological parents had a two-year window to regain custody of their child. But in May 2026, the Children, Youth and Families Act 2026 came into effect, removing the time limit on reunification orders.
A Better Life For Foster Kids founder Heather Baird grew up in the foster care system and said had seen many children become distressed and resist visitation.
"You normally find the children, once they get around the six, seven and eight … they start actually verbally saying, 'I don't want to go. '" Foster care, residential care and kinship care are the kinds of out-of-home care available in Victoria. Ms Baird said that in some cases the biological parent had abused the child or was unwell due to substance abuse or mental health issues.
"A child that's forced to go and see a parent that's abused them … it's got to traumatise these children all the more, and if the parent doesn't want or feel the child is important enough to meet these visitation appointments, then that just devastates a child," she said. Ms Baird said the two-year limit on reunification should be reintroduced and strictly enforced.
"The reality is, if you have your children removed and you haven't stood up in 12 months, you're never going to stand up for those children," she said. Children and Family Services chief executive Wendy Sturgess said parents needed more support if the legislative changes were to be effective in the long-term.
"The principal of reunification, of course, is a good one, on the proviso that parents are well-equipped and well-supported, and worked through their own trauma in parenting and having had a child removed," she said. The Department of Families, Fairness and Housing did not answer the ABC's specific questions about reunification. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, approximately 81 per cent of children put into care in Victoria return home within two years.
Women's Legal Service policy advocacy and communications director Roj Amedi said the issue was not the amount of time allowed for reunification, but the lack of support for biological parents.
"Most of the clients that we support at women's legal are often grappling and trying to survive family violence, and they're waiting months something years for housing, disability support, family violence services and other essential assistance," she said. Ms Amedi said the focus should be on whether reunification was safe and in the child's best interest rather than whether the family had run out of time.
"We should wrap around these people, we should support them, we should give them the best opportunity possible to keep families together safely," she said. Call for careful approach Former National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds AO said reunification needed to be done "really carefully and gradually".
"What that means is that we need qualified family support workers who are able to spend sufficient time with the family to build a relationship of trust and respect," she said. "These family support workers need to also have a good understanding of the child and what needs that particular child has. "During her tenure she commissioned a report looking at 12 years' worth of royal commissions and inquiries in child protection between 2010 and 2022.
"We found over 3,000 recommendations that were continuously repeated through this time, showing that they hadn't been implemented," Ms Hollonds said. "It does require coordination across portfolios such as health, education, human services, and this should not be left just to the child protection system alone. ""What we've committed to is a whole system review so that we can look to put the voices of foster and kinship carers back at the centre of Victoria's child protection system," she said.
Child Protection Foster Care Victoria Reunification Court Order Victoria Wendy Sturgess Anne Hollonds Children And Family Services A Better Life For Foster Kids
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