AROUND THE FARM
The 120-acre property that houses William Campbell College is a child’s paradise. A huge dam for canoeing and fishing, vast open spaces for play, future stables for horses, recreation and sports ovals, substantial cottages for the families, and grassy backyards for selected appropriate pets.
Accommodation at the College is in the form of farm-style cottages consisting of six bedrooms and capable of housing up to six children together with live-in foster carers and guest or respite carers. Priority is given to siblings and also siblings who are currently in a number of separate foster care placements. Where a potential arises for children from another family to be accommodated with the resident siblings, this will occur if it appears likely that an harmonious family environment can still be maintained.
Each cottage has support carers whose role evolves into aunts and uncles to emulate the extended family unit. If a situation arose necessitating the aunts and uncles becoming the live-in foster carers, they would ideally fill that role as they are already known to the children. The aunts and uncles undergo the same selection process and training program as full-time carers. Stringent Police and background checks are also required.
As a result of the fact that they are accepted and known to each child in the role of an aunt and uncle, the real problem of children in permanent care having a multitude of carers - including shift workers - is eliminated. This removes a destabilising factor from the children's care environment but, more importantly, reinforces the stability of a loving family.
Grandparents play an extremely important supportive role and have a similar function to the aunts and uncles in the role of the extended family. It is imperative for children to feel that they have older people to relate to whose life experiences and knowledge is essential to every child's inquisitiveness and wonderment about life. This, again, reinforces their security in a loving environment and in a very safe and stable relationship within the family unit. Stringent Police and background checks are required, together with relevant training.