Forecasting children in foster care – New South Wales OOHC Funding Model

The New South Wales Department of Community Services is a state child protection agency in Australia. It has developed a stock and flow discrete-event simulation model that forecasts the population of children in out-of-home care. This will allow planning and funding of out-of-home care services, as well as forecasting carer payment expenditure. It utilizes estimates of unit costs for different service components and makes some assumptions about the average service packages and carer payment rates to be provided for the different types of children. Children have been found to stay longer in relative/kinship care compared to foster care. The biggest cause of out-of-home care population increases is the greater use of relative/kinship placements since 1998.