Sixteen children are in need of a foster home in the Goulburn region. More than 45,000 children in Australia cannot live with their biological parents.
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The organisation Caring with Carers works in NSW and the ACT on behalf of foster care agencies to find and train carers in local communities.
Director Shannon Kendrick said the aim was to keep children in their community. This avoids disruption to school, extra curricular activities and extended family.
Currently, 16 children in the 2580 postcode are in need of foster carers. Ms Kendrick said they were looking for around six to seven families to care for these children.
"The court has made the decision that these children are not in a situation to return to their family... and we need to find carers for them," she said.
Ms Kendrick said while they didn't have any children in hotels in the Goulburn area, they did have children "in places where they need to move out".
The director said foster care was the last option, "extended family is always looked at first".
Ms Kendrick said many children experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and/or exposure to drugs and alcohol before they were removed.
One of the main problems Caring with Carers faces is finding homes for children between five and eight years old.
"Most people want a baby and think by the age of five a child has already learnt trauma and behaviours," she said.
"We have a queue of carers [looking for children] from zero to five years old but finding carers for primary school age kids is a lot harder.
"When you're bringing in an eight or 10 year old that has just been removed from home, due to drugs and alcohol or domestic violence, that's all coming with them."
Another hurdle the organisation faces is the difficulty of keeping siblings together.
"Siblings become separated [because] carers don't have the capacity to take on another two or three children," Ms Kendrick said.
Ms Kendrick said they were looking for carers who had an understanding of where these children had come from and why they behaved the way they did.
Carers can come from a variety of backgrounds. They must be over the age of 25 but can work, be retired, single, married, divorced, in a de facto relationship, part of the LGBTQIA community or same sex.
Ms Kendrick said it could take up to three months to become a certified carer with extensive background checks and training required.
The director encouraged people to become carers if "they have space to make a difference in someone's life that's been pretty difficult, to watch them flourish into an adult who can then thrive in life."
"Foster care isn't scary. If you've got a heart and some time and understanding of trauma then lets have a conversation," she said.
Head to caringwithcarers.com.au or call 0452 282 698 for more information.
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