Queensland spent $1.7m on just three foster carers

A Queensland program designed to create full-time professional foster carers and take the most at-risk children out of residential care homes has only managed to employ three people in five months at a cost of $1.7 million.

The government announced the Professional Foster Care Pilot Program in April this year, declaring they would seek to employ up to 100 carers, paid up to $100,000, in south-east Queensland and Townsville.

Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm said children with complex needs would be the target of the program, which she pledged $27 million to over four years, when announcing the program in April.

“Every child deserves the opportunity to thrive in a safe, supportive and loving environment, and that’s what this initiative will deliver for children with high needs,” she said at the time of the announcement.

“During a decade of decline the former Labor government failed children in their care, without a plan for the State’s most vulnerable kids and an ever-growing residential care system.”

But in response to a question on notice from Labor MP Corrine McMillan about how many carers were working and how much of the $4.9 million she said was budgeted for the 2025-26 financial year had been spent, Camm revealed only three carers were employed as of September 30.

“In the 2025-26 financial year, $1.741 million [excluding GST] was expended to rapidly establish and operationalise three Professional Foster Care services, which immediately commenced targeted recruitment efforts,” she said in the response in parliamentary documents.

“Since the launch of the pilot, three professional foster carers have commenced.”

Some of that money was also spent on volunteer foster carers in Mackay, but it is unclear how much.

The program – being delivered by Uniting Care and Key Assets Australia in Brisbane, and Life Without Barriers in Townsville – was an election promise from the then-Crisafulli opposition, who pledged to reduce the number of children in state care.

Ros Bates, who is currently the acting minister responsible for the portfolio while Camm is on sick leave, said the government valued foster carers and wanted to get more kids out of residential care.

“The benefits of a child being placed in foster care with a supportive family environment are far greater than if a child is placed in the corporatised residential care model which became the default option under Labor’s broken child safety system,” she said in response to questions from this masthead.

It has been far from smooth sailing for Camm since taking office, with a botched IT program rollout dominating headlines for months, followed by a scathing report into the state of the system following a commission of inquiry, and compounded by a growing number of children in the system.

Announcing the government’s response to the commission of inquiry, Camm said she was “drawing a line in the sand”, and committed that the 2819 children in residential care as of March, up from 2258 the previous year, would be the most under her leadership.

“Our government is committing to Queenslanders that [the number of children in state care] is the peak, that we will reduce the number of children in residential care, and that is the line in the sand,” she said at the time.

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