At 31 December 2011, 2,491 children and young people were in the custody and guardianship of the Minister for Education and Child Development under 12 month or guardianship to 18 years orders. An additional 58 were on Investigation and Assessment Orders. (1)
They had the following characteristics:
Type of guardianship (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
Order to 18 years – 86.4%
12 month Order – 13.6%
Ages (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
0 to 1 – 5.6%
2 to 4 – 16.0%
5 to 9 – 31.2%
10 to 14 – 28.3%
15 to 17 – 18.9%
Gender (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
Male – 53.3%
Female – 46.7%
Undetermined – 0%
Aboriginality (of those on 18 year and 12 month orders)
Indigenous – 25.9%
Non-Indigenous – 71.8%
Undetermined – 2.2%
Accommodation arrangements
Of the 2,476 children and young people (2) in alternative care at 31 December 2011, the accommodation arrangements were:
Foster care – 41.7%
Relative and kinship care – 42.2%
Financially assisted adoption – 0.2%
Families SA residential care – 4.4%
NGO residential care – 2.0%
Emergency and short term accommodation – 9.5%
Including:
…DFC housing – 2.9%
…Tregenza villas – 1.0%
…NGO emergency – 2.3%
…Family day care – 0.2%
…Interim emergency accommodation – 3.1%
Placement stability
In their passage through the care system, children will generally change placement a number of times. Of the 2,476 children and young people in alternative care at 31 December 2011, their experiences were:
First placement – 3.6%
One – 17.6%
Two to five – 45.1%
Six to ten – 19.7%
More than ten – 14.0%
The number of children and young people in the care of the Minister has grown steadily from 1,656 at 31 December 2006 to 2,491 at 31 December 2011.
(1) Please note that these and the following figures are subject to minor adjustment and should be taken as indicative only.
(2) The statistics on this page are mainly drawn from Families SA figures on children and young people under the guardianship of the Minister and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data on children and young people in alternative care. Those under guardianship and those under alternative care are overlapping but not identical populations; that is most, but not all, children in alternative care are on a custody or guardianship order, and similarly, most, but not all, children under the guardianship of the Minister are in alternative care. However, the numbers of these two populations are different and exact comparisons should not be made.
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