Message to foster and kinship carers from Child Safety Director-General on updated Coronavirus restrictions

Your attention is drawn to this Message to Foster and Kinship Carers from Deidre Mulkerin, Director-General, Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women sent to Carers on Monday, 30th March 2020.

Please check with foster or kinship carers being supported by your organisation that they have received this message and ensure that you also take note of its content.

The message contains important advice about:

• Recent Australian Government announcements about limits on the number of people who  can come together and self-isolation recommendations regarding older people including those over 70 or over 60 with pre-existing health conditions, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over 50 years of age
• Guidance about ways in which children and young people can maintain contact with their family and the processes to be used in making decisions about these arrangements
• Making the right decisions about whether or not children in your care attend a child care centre, or go to school or alternatively stay at home and participate in on-line learning that most schools are now providing.

Reminders –

How to receive up-to-date and accurate information

If you have not yet made sure that all of your staff and others associated with the delivery of your organisation’s services have become eNews subscribers, do so now. It is an easy way of making sure that they promptly receive up-to-date information (such as the information contained with the Department’s sector update). To subscribe, go to the home page of PeakCare’s website, scroll down and follow the instructions – it takes a few seconds only.

Frank exchange of advice about concerns and solutions

Respond to the invitation to send PeakCare’s Executive Director (lwegener@peakcare.org.au)  succinctly stated questions, issues of concern, and/ or recommendations about actions that could be taken to improve our sector’s capacity to deal with the impact of the virus. What you send to us will inform our close liaison with the Child Safety Minister Di Farmer and the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women. This is an invitation extended to all – no matter what job you have or where or for whom you work.

As information is received, we very quickly communicate with Officers of the Department about the matters raised with us to ensure that they are already included or added to a pooled ‘issues register’. This is to make sure that answers to the questions asked are given a consistent response.

Talk to us

Respond to the invitation to talk with us and each other at regular intervals via Zoom. If you wish to be invited to participate in these discussions, please email your name, position title, name of your organisation and contact details (email address, phone number/s) to Anushri Bellary (abellary@peakcare.org.au) by no later than 1st April. The arrangements we make for these discussions will depend on the number of people who wish to join in on them.