Alice’s Story

Please help us give a young person like Alice* the additional support they need so they can safely return home to family.

For some time now here at OzChild we have been delivering evidence-based programs like Treatment Foster Care Oregon (TFCO) to improve outcomes for at-risk children and young people.

Without a doubt, the introduction of TFCO has changed the lives of many children, and will continue to change the lives of many more, but it is the support we receive from people like you that makes it all possible.

TFCO is giving kids like Alice the opportunity to be reunited with their birth family after experiencing multiple foster care placement breakdowns, residential care placements and time spent in hotels, simply because they exhibit complex and extreme behaviours that impact on their ability to live in family-based arrangements.

Alice has been part of our TFCO program for a few months now, and with the support of our TFCO team, her carer Janet* and the motivation to return to the care of her mum and dad, Alice is progressing through the program well.

Things have not been easy for Alice, at just 9 years old she was removed from the care of her father and placed with a kinship carer. That placement broke down quickly because of Alice’s destructive and violent behaviour.

Placed into a residential care facility Alice began to participate in risk taking behaviours which included engaging with strangers online making her extremely vulnerable and impacting negatively on her mental health. The opportunity to return home to her family was a lifeline TFCO was able to provide for Alice.

Recently, Janet, Alice’s TFCO carer wrote a letter to her birth parents.

Since the inception of OzChild’s evidence-based programs in 2016 – 1,195 families and nearly 3,000 children and young people have been supported, preventing many hundreds, if not thousands of children from entering out-of-home care.

The number of potentially vulnerable children in Australia will increase significantly because of COVID-19. There is no doubt significant financial stress combined with the experience of living through a global pandemic, social isolation, and temporary disruption to education all constitute risk factors for vulnerability.

For many of us there is light at the end of the tunnel now, and hopefully we will be able to spend time with our friends and loved ones during the holidays. But for some families the pandemic has placed them at greater risk of being separated.

You can help children and young people have access to the lifeline they so desperately need.

*names have been changed to protect identities

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