Thousands of Queensland children are living in residential care facilities, with some experts warning the system is doing more harm to already traumatised children.
Residential care is like a share house, but for children – with the addition of a youth worker for supervision.
"They were there for a while until they could find a foster family willing to take all three, because Child Safety didn’t want the siblings split up, which is very fair.Peak Care executive director Lindsay Wegener says it is common for children as young as six to be in residential care. "When you think about the brain development of a five and a six-year-old, you really need these specialised youth workers to come in that understand the development and where they should be at and how to support these kids," she said.She said very young children who had experienced trauma were often placed with much older children who had also experienced trauma.
“When we've got more than 10,000 children in care and we've got 5,700 carers, those numbers don't add up,” Mr Smith said. "One of the things we continue to advocate through the QFCC is that we need to remember young people need far more than just an accommodation response," she said."That may not be with the parents in the first instance, but when we see 1,300 young people being placed in residential care, that's 1,300 children who have no adult within their family, within their kinship structure, willing and able to care for them.
"Any system that doesn’t place supporting children with the love and support to recover from their trauma at its heart, or to recover the families so they can parent again, will be more like a hospital that only has an emergency department."Director-General of the Department of Children, Youth Justice, and Multicultural Affairs Deidre Mulkerin said she was working to decrease the number of young children in care.Deidre Mulkerin is "heartbroken" that children are in care.
"And while they're there, to make sure that they're safe, they're cared for, that we provide the best possible medical care, counselling support … whatever it is that they need in order to help manage their behaviours, which is often why children end up in residential care."Children age out of the system when they turn 18 but there are various levels of support beyond that.
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