A Tasmanian foster carer, who’s been looking after children for nearly two and a half decades, says there’s great need for more families to open their homes and hearts to Tasmanian children in need.
Life Without Barriers carer Katie Wells, has been a foster mum for 23 years, and she also has six biological children.
The seasoned parent said she’s looked after more than 160 children over that time.
“The first little person we got was a little baby boy, he was about six months old and he stayed for about three months … he’d be in his mid twenties now,” Ms Wells told iHeart Tassie.
In the 2025-26 financial year, the daily average number of children living in family based foster care in Tasmania was 876, with 437 in non-kin family based foster care, and 439 children in kinship care.
Ms Wells said the need for more Tasmanians to foster was enormous.
“There are lots of carers who are older now and who have grandchildren,” she said.
“Even as grandparents, we’ve managed to stay current carers and really busy carers, but I think there are some out there, as that generation of older carers ages, that they won’t keep caring.
“I think what else is impacting the lack of carers … the housing issue and cost of living issues and the uncertainty.”
There are different types of family based foster care, including emergency care, where children need urgent placement, respite care, where children already in care are temporarily placed with different carers, short term and long term care.
Life Without Barriers provides training and support to new foster carers.
Ms Wells said it was also important those considering becoming a foster parent are right for the job.
“Maybe in the earlier days I would have called it a calling, I think to be a foster carer you need to have more than a commitment, more than a passion, more than wanting to be able to change a child’s life, it’s a combination of all those things,” she said.
“It’s a sacrifical thing to do and people say ‘that’s amazing’, but it’s hard work. “
Ms Wells said the ultimate goal of fostering was to give families the grace to work out their problems, so families could be reunited when they were ready.
“We don’t judge the families they’ve come from, because we don’t know that circumstance,” she said.
“I think a lot of people do think all kids who come into out of home care come from [rough backgrounds] … sometimes it’s just forced homelessness.”
“We focus on the family and the relationship they can have with birth family if that’s a thing that can happen.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education, Children and Young People said a recruitment and retention strategy was being developed with carers and non-government service providers.
“The Tasmanian government has announced an investment of $8m over four years for the continued uplift of the foster and formal kinship carer allowance, increasing support for existing carers and encouraging people who might be considering becoming a foster or kinship carer,” they said.
For more on this story, take a listen to this week’s episode of iHeart Tassie:
