Residential Program
Mercy Family Services in the process of
establishing two new residential programs in Inala and
Caboolture. These will be up and running before Christmas and
will house four young people in each.
Foster Care Recruitment Campaign
The Department of Child Safety launched a
Statewide Recruitment Campaign for foster carers in May 2008.
The campaign has included television, radio and press
advertising and has captured an overwhelming
level of interest from the community. The campaign is due to
finish at the end of August with the Department's statewide
target being the recruitment of 500 new carers.
In January 2008, the Department commenced the
Foster and Kinship Care Training and Assessment Services
(F&KCTAS) funding round. All grant funded organisations who
currently provide Foster and Kinship Care Services and
Specialist Foster Care Services were invited to apply for
no-recurrent funding to assist the Department with meeting the
additional training and assessment needs of the new carers the
Department intended to recruit through the campaign.
The Department aimed to
select one Non-Government Organisation partner per departmental
zone to work closely and collaboratively with them, primarily to
deliver training to, and assessment of, Foster and Kinship
Carers. Mercy Family Services was the successful agency
in both the Ipswich & Western and the Brisbane North & Sunshine
Coast zones.
Zillmere Foster & Kinship Care Program - Brisbane North &
Sunshine Coast
Over half-way into the funding period and the
workload for the team at Zillmere has increased dramatically. To
date the team has home-visited over 40 potential foster care
applicants and provided Information Sessions and Quality Care
Pre-Service Training to those and many others. The workload has
been made manageable by the fantastic partnership work that
occurs with the zones' Placement Service Unit, who have also
home-visited and co-presented training with MFS. The response to
the advertising campaign in the Brisbane North & Sunshine Coast
zone has been so amazing that there are still many hundreds of
applicants to be visited, trained and assessed. It is
anticipated that the coming few months will be filled with a
significant amount of assessment work and the approval of new
foster carers in the zone.
Ipswich & Western Zone - Foster & Kinship Care Training &
Assessment Service:
In the first three months of the funding period
MFS Goodna and Toowoomba have worked extremely hard to complete
initial interviews on over 100 perspective carer families. This
was only possible with the support of all the team members in
the workgroups. In Goodna eight families have been through
training with two having been assessed and awaiting approval and
six awaiting assessment. Twenty-two more families will commence
training on Saturday 6th September 2008. Toowoomba are in the
process of completing 19 assessments; 23 households completed
training. The participants have been given some time to complete
their homework from training before allocating and starting
their assessments - there are 14 households still to be
allocated to a worker to do the assessment.
Updated 4 September 2008
Enquiries:
Contact: Executive Director
Tel: (07) 3267 9000
Email:
mfs.admin@mfsq.org.au
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