00:00Julie Critchley has been fostering vulnerable children in the Adelaide Hills for a decade.
00:08It really does change your life, like having a baby changes your life.
00:11She's part of Mockingbird, a supportive new program run by Life Without Barriers
00:16that links up foster families to create an extended family-like environment.
00:21So aunties, uncles, grandmas, granddads, we try and replicate.
00:25So carers and young people have got an opportunity to lean on other people
00:29and have a shared experience for support.
00:31Just being able to talk to people about what's happening in your life,
00:35what's happening in your home with someone who gets it is huge.
00:39Each group of foster families is called a constellation.
00:43We have families within Mockingbird that have kids have sleepovers with other kids
00:48and just sort of normalising all that so that it is like a family.
00:52I guess I'm the grandma.
00:55Adelaide has the most constellations in Australia
00:58with six established in the past three years.
01:01There are also two constellations in New South Wales and Victoria
01:05and there is an appetite for more.
01:07One of the things that we've seen as a benefit of the model
01:10is supporting carers to care for longer, so improving care retention
01:14and also improving placement stability.
01:18Flinders University academic Helen McLaren tracked Mockingbird,
01:22which hails from the US, for two years,
01:25finding it allowed more siblings to be placed in the same home or within a constellation
01:30and created stronger social bonds.
01:33It's really nice to see the children connecting, having friends and being together.
01:37She says foster children can be stigmatised and not accepted at school
01:42but are able to form connections with other kids in their constellation.
01:46For the first time these children were experiencing handing out invitations
01:50and having other children come to their birthday parties.
01:53We've been on a camping trip together, that was fantastic
01:56and we've got another one booked for later on this year.
01:58Rituals every kid should get to enjoy.
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