Who cares? A study of diverse care arrangements in Australian society

First, a variety of people may share the care of one child. Indigenous children, for example, move between different carers within and beyond extended family structures. It is difficult to identify one primary carer when a child moves as often as several times a week.

The second factor is mobility: children move, for example, between foster parents and natural parents. Ethnic children move from carer to carer. Such mobility, producing frequent changes of care, conflicts with the assumed ‘ongoing care’ requirement for entitlement to family assistance.

These issues are being pursued in two ways. First, by testing more flexible payment arrangements in a Statement of Care pilot with volunteer Indigenous families. Second, we are considering new approaches for children moved between carers at the intervention of State and Territory welfare authorities.

Statement of Care Pilot

The Statement of Care pilot is seeking to address some of the problems arising from the variety of carers and the mobility of Indigenous children. The pilot commenced in May 2000 and is likely to continue until February or March 2001. It is being conducted in Wreck Bay, Nowra and Wollongong, NSW; Yarrabah/Cairns and Cherbourg in Queensland; Suburban Melbourne, and Port Augusta, in South Australia.

Participants in the process are involved in forming care groups with other members of their extended families. They also agree to pass on family assistance to the person who currently has care of the child as a means of ensuring better outcomes for children.

The success of the pilot depends on group and individual understanding of the agreement to redirect funds, and on peer-group pressure. Each care-group member is responsible for passing around family-assistance funds as each child moves to other carers. They are not required to formally tell Centrelink the child has moved.

Care groups in the pilot are being supported in each location by small project teams comprising Indigenous Liaison Officers, local community representatives and other Family and Community Services employees.

The local project teams are monitoring progress in each location, and we plan to hold workshops with participants at the end of each leg to get first-hand information of their experiences and reactions. There is already evidence that families have found the arrangements empower them to manage their own families in a way that suits their natural child-raising patterns.

Foster care: the short-term transitions

Similarly, we are looking at new approaches to address broken periods of family assistance entitlement for children in short-term foster care. We are investigating ways of ensuring families going through the transitional phases of restoration processes can meet their children’s costs more easily. A possible response would be to direct payment to families involved in a restoration process as if they already had ongoing care of the child. Cost, of course, is a consideration.

Conclusions