Hurting, healing, finding wholeness again, and not hurting others…
Over the last couple of months, myself and some other foster/kinship carers are enjoying listening to the Australian Childhood Foundation...
Help us find stable, loving homes for any child who needs one, and provide support for those that do.
What is fostering and why is there such a need?
Australia
Australia
Tasmania
Children currently in out of home care
Increase in number of children entering care each year across Australia
Annual Net Carer Deficit across Australia. 1,400 new carers and 1,500+ ceasing.
For most of us, childhood was a time of fun, growing, learning, and dreaming about our future. We were protected from adult problems and could enter adulthood with hope and excitement. For some children in Australia, this isn’t the case. Some families are unable to protect their children and unable to provide the care they need to grow.
In each state and territory child protection or out of home care legislation protects childhood and enshrines rights for all children based on the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
If children are in homes at risk or receiving abuse or neglect, the Government steps in, first to work with the families of birth and then, if needed, children are removed for their safety.
Australia
Michelle Murray
Team leader: Baptcare
I have been working alongside Mary and Fostering Hope since I started this role in November 2019. The Fostering Hope team is a wealth of knowledge and have a clear passion for supporting Tasmanian Carers and Foster Children. I have received positive feedback from carers who find the addition supports and connections with other Fostering Hope participants very helpful. Mary and the team are such supportive advocates for positive changes in the OOHC space in Tasmania.
What is a foster carer?
There are different categories of carers. Foster carers are people who choose to step forward and become carers for children if they are removed. Kinship carers are known to a child before they are removed, and Informal carers are usually family members who take on raising a child for a short time or long time without the intervention of the Government.
Why is there such a need for fostering? For multiple, complicated, and layered reasons – it may be generational, it may be addiction, it may be mental health, it may be job loss and stress, it may be domestic abuse – often it is multiple reasons. Whatever the reason, the parents need support and the children need a childhood, healing, and hope.
Fostering Hope is responding to the need in the community to find more foster and kinship carers. To reach out and find families for all children who need them. To find homes that are healing, homes that are hopeful and respectful of birth families.
Who is Fostering Hope?
Fostering Hope is a community organisation whose work comes from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus to ‘visit’ and ‘care for’ orphans and widows, to put the lonely in families, to love the fatherless, to care for children, and to love the neighbours in the communities. We are seeking to find families for children growing up in out of home care that are healing, hopeful, and respectful of everyone on the journey.
Fostering Hope’s vision is to see a movement of communities rising up and caring for at-risk children and their families. We work to raise awareness about this need, equip communities, and support foster and kinship and informal carers.
Podcasts
Video
Book a speaker
Training & support
Resources
Supporting
resources
To support foster and kinship carers and children growing up in care, Fostering Hope is constantly developing resources, and searching for others that we feel might be helpful.
Click on any of the options to check out the resources
NEWS & STORIES
We are guilty of many errors and many faults,
But our worst crime is abandoning the children,
Neglecting the fountain of life.
Many things can wait. Children cannot.
Right now, their bones are being formed,
Their blood is being made,
And their senses are being developed.
To them we cannot answer, “Tomorrow.”
Their name is today.
Gabriela Mistral, Nobel Laureate