The Burdekin Association is thrilled to announce that a former employee, Jay Williams, has established a new skincare company – ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare – and he has committed to donating 15 per cent of the company’s profits to The Burdekin Association for one year.
The Burdekin Association’s CEO, Justene Gordon was joined by young people – Alice and Ava – and Case Managers – Chris and Howie. They were filmed while talking with first-hand experience of how The Burdekin Association provides housing, support and community intervention services for children and young people – helping to solve issues of child and youth homelessness.
ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare products are proudly made in Sydney by reputable partners in the health and beauty field and feature antioxidants, including Kakadu plum extract, lilly pilly fruit extract, bilberry fruit extract, lavender oil, Resveratrol, and Tocopheryl Acetate (a form of Vitamin E).
The funds raised through the sale of ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare products will be used to provide case management services to children in our Out of Home Care. The funds will help them to learn independent living skills, complete their studies, live independently, and go on to gain employment.
We hope through ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare’s advertising campaign, that more people will discover what we do, volunteer with us, become a foster carer of a young person, and donate.
Justene Gordon, CEO of The Burdekin Association
ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare’s endeavours will help The Burdekin Association by raising our profile, making people aware of how we’re aiming to ensure that every child or young person has a safe home.
“The main purpose of the ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare brand is about fundraising and supporting organisations who are helping our young disadvantaged kids. That’s what really makes us, us.”
Jay Williams, Founder of ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare
You can visit the ACTIVEAUSSIE Skincare website to place an order and support a great cause (The Burdekin Association!) 💙💛
Late last week, ‘The Sun Herald’ published an article by Amber Schultz that outlined that “NSW’s foster carers are leaving the system in droves, with nearly 1,000 authorised carers quitting in the past year. There were 17,623 authorised carers in December 2022, compared to 16,643 in December 2023.
Foster carers that were interviewed by ‘The Sun Herald’ claimed that they were struggling with the low payments they received, limited support for children with behavioural issues, poor communication with agencies (which placed the children in their care and the lack of an independent body to oversee the sector).
The Department of Communities and Justice manages 45 per cent of the households in the Carers Register, non-government organisations manage the other 55 per cent.
There are 11,976 households with one or more registered carers and nearly 15,000 children in need of care and protection. According to the article in ‘The Sun Herald’, just one third of these children are placed with foster care families.
Out-of-home care is provided to children and young people who are unable to live with their own families. Foster carers take on the ‘parent like’ responsibilities for a period of time, to provide a safe, nurturing and secure family like environment for children and young people needing care.
Reform of child protection system
The NSW Government is “embarking on significant reform of the child protection system, and a critical element of that reform will be more support for foster carers.”
“Each year, 600 new foster carers are needed in NSW to take care of children who can’t live safely at home. Carers can be family members or foster carers, and come from a diverse range of backgrounds and all walks of life,” states the Department of Communities and Justice media release from September 2023.
The Department of Communities and Justice established a team in November 2023 to move children from High-Cost Emergency Arrangements (HCEA) to more suitable arrangements. HCEA’s place children in hotels, motels, serviced apartments, or rental accommodation, where they are cared for by a rotating roster of shift workers. These type of arrangements can cost up to $2 million a year for each child.
Through intensive “family finding, where caseworkers search out possible family connections who might be able to care for the child under kinship care arrangements, matching children to newly recruited emergency foster carers, working with NGO partners to fill vacancies in their contracts with government and re-negotiating the amount paid to HCEA providers.
The Department of Communities and Justice is “working to reduce reliance on alternative care arrangements, where for-profit labour hire firms provide staff to supervise children.”
The Burdekin Foster Care difference
The Burdekin Association helps young people who, for various reasons, can’t live with their family. A Burdekin foster carer provides young people with a safe, positive, nurturing home to live in, a listening ear and practical day-to-day assistance.
The main difference? At The Burdekin Association, we can provide a home RENT FREE or pay some of the rent/mortgage for foster carers. We adapt and work with foster carers to ensure that they are provided with weekly wrap-around support and do not need to shoulder any financial burden. That way, they can focus on the most important thing – giving our young people what they need.
The length of commitment as a foster carer can be tailored to the foster carer’s needs – if they can only commit for a couple of years – we can absolutely work with that, and any longer is an absolute bonus!
The Burdekin Association provides foster carers with a team of support professionals, 24 hour on-call assistance, regular respite and ongoing training.
The Burdekin Association specialises in fostering teenagers (sometimes tweens), when they are at their most vulnerable and need the most support.
Burdekin Foster Carers are:
Supported 24 hours a day with on-call assistance.
Able to receive 24 days respite per year.
Able to receive a carer allowance to meet the needs of the child or young person placed in their care.
Able to undertake fostering within a Burdekin property, should their own home not be suitable.
Are supported weekly by Burdekin staff and provided with preparatory and ongoing training throughout their foster care journey.
Foster carers do not receive formal wages. A foster carer allowance is provided to help ensure the child has everything that they need. This allowance is based on the age of the child being cared for.
As with all parents, foster carers may be eligible for financial assistance through Centrelink, depending on their work and financial circumstances.
Want more information?
There are six steps to becoming a foster carer with The Burdekin Association. Find out more here…
The Burdekin Association is excited to reveal that we are the recipient of a FutureSteps Grant of $89,000 to be spent on renovating one of the houses we manage for young people transitioning from out of home care to semi-independent living in Sydney. The grant will help three additional young people transition into semi-independent living through the better use of space in the property.
What is FutureSteps?
FutureSteps is a Lendlease Social Impact Fund that’s grounded in the belief that everyone needs to call a place home. Lendlease partners with The Burdekin Association to achieve long term impact through increasing the availability of safe and appropriate housing, the number of pathways to education and employment, and participation in the community.
The FutureSteps Social Impact Fund focuses on addressing homelessness and increasing housing supply for those at risk of or experiencing homelessness. The grants typically awarded range in amounts between $20,000 and $100,000 and one of their target groups includes young people.
It all came about on Community Day – a day when Lendlease volunteers spend their time and skills to make a difference in the communities where they live and work. Thirty volunteers spent a day at our property doing painting, gardening, picture hanging, furniture building and much more in Stanmore. Katherine Bushell from Lendlease suggested that we apply for the FutureSteps grant. It took us one month to put it all together.
Claire Oxlade, Property and Asset Lead at The Burdekin Association
“Our tradie, Kevin, looked at our plans to reconfigure the layout of the space at the property to accommodate three more young people. He suggested that it would work,” continued Claire.
During the grant application process, we submitted the property’s plans, renovation costings, and explained how we would reconfigure the layout of the property to create the extra space for an additional three young people in our care. For Lendlease to give us the entire grant – $89,000 – is amazing! We will be able to use the space more sensibly.
Claire Oxlade, Property and Asset Lead at The Burdekin Association
A self-contained two-bedroom unit can now be created at the front of the property. This reconfiguration will help to provide wraparound care for the young person living there – as they will remain close to staff and the other young people living in the remainder of the house, but also have space to themselves. It will potentially be perfect for a young single parent, who may need support, but also privacy and quiet.
The reconfiguration will also involve the renovation of the current staff office space and combined kitchen into a studio staff office / bedroom / kitchenette.
Claire Oxlade in the area to be renovatedThe front office to become solely a bedroomThe current living roomClaire Oxlade stands where a new bedroom could be positioned The current staff office and kitchen. The current staff office and kitchen.
“The staff at the property use the office a great deal, and renovating the current space to allow them to work and then be able to sleep overnight in a comfortable area will make such a difference,” Claire continued.
A staff bedroom upstairs at the property will then be released, to be used by an additional young person.
The project has enthused local architect and sessional academic, Jamileh Jahangiri of Orsi Architecture Studio, who met with Burdekin staff members during a recent networking event. She has offered to provide her architectural knowledge free of charge and will project manage the renovation of the property. Jamileh will provide concept designs, design briefs and a schedule of proposed materials and finishes and furniture layouts. She is keen to see how the young residents can be involved in the renovation process – choosing paint colours, designing the layout of the rooms, and learning a bit of design along the way.
If there are funds remaining once these renovations are complete, we hope to remove the kitchen cabinets, making the main kitchen more open plan, allowing for ‘Master Chef’ style cooking workshops to be held for the young people.
It’s so exciting. We wouldn’t normally be able to do anything like this. If we can make it more homely, well that’s my mission accomplished
Claire Oxlade, Property and Asset Lead at The Burdekin Association
What next?
The Burdekin Association is always looking for suppliers of white goods – fridges, washing machines, dryers, microwaves, air fryers and blenders, along with coffee tables, BBQs, outdoor furniture and kitchen utensils – to help our young people live comfortably in such a home. To donate a white good or to help our young people, please click here.
The NSW government has announced universal extended care to 21 years for young people in state care (from February 2023). We are thrilled to have played a small part in this.
Campaigning across the country for the leaving care age to be lifted from 18 to 21 years of age has been significant. Many States have committed to further support for young people and over the weekend 5/6 November 2022 NSW joined the other State and Territories by committing to extending the supports currently in place for up to 18 year old to up to 21 years old young people. This age extension of 3 years will make a direct difference to young people in foster care and we look forward to making this work for our young people.
We would like to recognise Alex who is one of our young people and thank him and all the young people involved in the campaign for speaking up. We couldn’t have done it without you.
‘We thank all the young people, those with lived experience and others, who championed this effort. Ensuring young people in care have a fair, equitable, robust and real opportunity for all that life brings is what we all strive for’.
Justene Gordon, CEO, The Burdekin Association
About
The Home Stretch campaign, launched in 2015 advocating for the leaving care arrangements for young people in State care to be extended from 18 to 21 nationally. With NSW’s commitment, Home Stretch is the most significant child welfare reform in a generation, now supported in every Australian state or territory.
Natasha Maclaren-Jones MLC made this historic announcement, congratulations to all involved including the NSW OOHC sector and everyone – especially the young people – who have advocated for this reform. Together, we did it! We#madeit21! Congratulations also to the Chair of Home Stretch and CEO of Anglicare Victoria Paul McDonald for his tireless work.
Left to right – Paul McDonald, Natasha Maclaren-Jones MLC, Liz Knight and Mohita Kapoor attending the announcement.
We acknowledge the Aboriginal people of the Cadigal and Gayamaygal Clans. We acknowledge the Country on which we live, work, and gather as being Aboriginal land.
We acknowledge the lands, waterways and skies that are connected to Aboriginal people. We honour them and pay our deepest respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
We respect their rightful place within our communities, and we value their ancient cultural knowledge and practices.
We deeply respect that this will always be Aboriginal land and we will honour and follow the first peoples’ values in caring for the Country and for preserving their culture.
We deeply value that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the oldest living culture in the world and we will continue to work with their peoples and communities to ensure their cultures endure and remain strong.
