National framework for protecting Australia's children indicators

Foster care is one type of out-of-home care provided for children who are unable to live with their families.

Foster care households are private households containing one or more foster carers:

• who have undergone the relevant screening/selection and approval process
• who have received authorisation from the relevant department or agency to enable a child to be placed in their care
• for whom reimbursement is available from the state or territory government for expenses incurred in caring for a child
• who are part of an ongoing review process.

This indicator provides information on households that commenced or exited foster care during the year. It also provides the number of foster care households on an average day during the year.

For all indicator displays, where all years of data are comparable over time an ‘All’ category will be provided as an option in the ‘Year’ drop down display. If only a selection of specific years are comparable, these years (e.g. 2017 to 2019) will be provided as an option under ‘Year’ and ‘All’ will not be an option. See the footnotes for this indicator in the supplementary tables hyperlink below for further information.

See the supplementary table for this indicator for further information and footnotes about these data.

Indicator technical specifications

The information below provides technical specifications for the summary indicator data presented in the quick reference guide.

Explanatory notes

Includes all foster carer households that had received authorisation from the relevant department or agency to enable a child to be placed in their care are included. This includes households that have received provisional authorisation (which may be in order to facilitate a placement), whilst formal approval/registration is being finalised.

See the supplementary table for this indicator for further information and footnotes about these data.