New national guidelines for foster care

The traditionally New national guidelines for foster care

ELEANOR HALL: The Federal Government is moving to give foster children more choice in how they're cared for.

For the first time all foster children in Australia will be covered by uniform national standards that will ensure that they receive health checks as well as individual education plans.

They will also have a whole of plan care that will travel with them if they move.

It's the first time that a national foster care standards system has been designed and carer groups have welcomed the move, as Jennifer Macey reports.

JENNIFER MACEY: Ken Abery has four children, 13 grandchildren and in the past 50 years has had up to 700 foster children.

KEN ABERY: I mean they range from overnight stays to children that come to you. We had one guy came to us, he was four months old, he's just moved out now at 22. I mean and it's important that when a young person gets to 18 that they're just not suddenly cast adrift because they're no longer under departmental ordinance.

JENNIFER MACEY: Ken Abery is also the chairman of the Australian Foster and Kinship Carers Partnership and lives in Tasmania, which has policies but no standards in place for foster carers.

He says the rules for foster carers varies widely from state to state such as - for example - whether a child gets a health check before going into care.

KEN ABERY: And depending on the state and territory, it's one of the first things that should be happening when a child comes into care to ascertain the needs of the child. But again you see it's not uniform and that's what the national standards are about is to get uniformity.

JENNIFER MACEY: To create some sort of uniformity the Federal Government has today released a set of draft national guidelines for children in out of home care.

The Minister for Families and Housing is Jenny Macklin.

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