Foster Care Queensland

Our Library

Dangerous Relationships – How to Identify and respond to the Seven Warnings Signs of a Troubled Relationship
Author – Noelle Nelson
The relationships used as illustrations in this book are composites of individual cases. They represent the most common relationships involving domestic violence, as represented in the literature and from my direct experience over the years as a practicing psychotherapist, clinical psychotherapist, and trial consultants. Names and many details have been changed to protect client confidentiality.
This book is not meant to replace ongoing support groups, therapy, or any other counseling. If you’re getting help, keep it up! You’re on the road to health and wholeness.

Heartsick for Country – Stories of Love, spirit and Creation
Edited by – Sally Morgan, Tjalaminu Mia and blaze Kwaymullina
Heartsick for Country is a powerful collection of personal stories that share knowledge, insight and emotion, and speak of the love Aboriginal peoples have for their countries. Stories that provide a better understanding of the deep connection to country Indigenous peoples hold close to their hearts.

On Their Own – What happens to kids when they age out of the Foster Care System?
Authors – Matha Shirk & Gary Stangler
On Their Own tells the compelling stories of ten young people whose lives are full of promise, but who face economic and social barriers stemming from the disruptions of foster care. This book calls for action to provide youth in foster care the same opportunities on the road to adulthood that most of our youth take for granted--access to higher education, vocational training, medical care, housing, and relationships within their communities. On Their Own is meant to serve as a clarion call not only to policymakers, but to all Americans who care about the future of our young people.

Difficult Personalities – A practical guide to managing the hurtful behavior of others (and maybe your own)
Authors – Dr Helen McGrath & Haze Edwards
We all have people in our lives who frustrate, annoy or hurt us. Consider those who claim “I’m always right”, workplace bullies, or obsessive personality types. Most of us occasionally hurt others, too.
Difficult Personalities is a reassuring guide to help us deal with the difficult personalities we encounter daily, as well as with our own. It offers strategies such as anger and conflict management, means of achieving empathy, optimism and assertion, and how to make decisions about difficult relationships.

Breaking the Silence – Survivors of child abuse speak out
Edited by - Liz Mullinar & Candida Hunt
Child abuse – emotional, physical and sexual – is the last taboo. Once the subject was shrouded in secrecy, guilt and shame; now the truth is at last being told as the widespread existence of child abuse in Australia is acknowledged and confronted. In Breaking the Silence, over one hundred members and supporters of Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse (ASCA) write movingly and openly about their experiences, reminding us all that to be abused as a child can happen to anyone, is never the fault of the child, and need not be a life sentence.
Breaking the Silence is arranged thematically to portray the healing journey a survivor must undertake – a journey through fear, pain, rage and feelings of hopelessness and isolation before the triumphant breakthrough to recovery. Sometimes raw and bitter, sometimes achingly poignant, but always powerful, compelling and inspirational, the voices in this unique collection speak to us from the depths of a silence until now profound.

Lost Innocents: Righting the Record – Report on Child Migration August 2001
Senate Community affairs References Committee

Valuing young lives – Evaluation of the National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy.
Australian Institute of Family Studies
The Evaluation Report is being published in five volumes. Valuing Young Lives provides an overview of the Strategy, what the Strategy achieved and what was learned from the Strategy as a whole. Detailed information about what was achieved and learned by projects within each of the particular approaches adopted by the Strategy is presented in four Technical Reports.

Families at Risk – A guide to understanding and protecting children and care providers involved in out-of-home or adoptive care.
By – Jodie Kulp
Jodie Kulp founded Graphic Arts in 1979. It is now one of the Twin Cities best known and most successful design production studios. In addition, she and her husband, Karl, have cared for children in out-of-home care since 1980. Presently, they have one adopted daughter. As Jodie’s involvement with social services agencies become more frequent and often frustrating, she decided to write and design a simple brochure for families dealing with child welfare services. She discovered that when it comes to children in out-of-home care and their families, nothing is simple or easy. Asking questions and probing inconsistencies with the some tenacity she’s used to build a strong family and a successful business, Jodie’s Kulp spent two years writing this incredibly comprehensive and useful guide through the maze of hoops, barriers and pitfalls that surrogate families – and out-of-home children – face

Under Three – A Comprehensive Guide to Caring for Your Baby and Toddler
Edited by – John S. O’Shea MD
Written by a panel of doctors and health-care practitioners, this lavishly illustrated guide covers everything you need to know about infant and toddler care, from preparing for the new arrival through the first three years of life. Included are discussions of:

Becoming Parents: caring for yourself; preparing for the hospital; induced labor and caesarean section; the possibility of miscarriage; the first moments of life; items you will need for the new baby; making you home safe.
Daily Care: the early days; the newborn’s skin; immunization; postpartum depression; children with special needs; feeding; your child’s teeth; sleep and bedtime; toilet training; medical care
Your Growing Child; seeing; movement; communication; thinking; becoming a person
Family Matters: the working mother and separation; other separations; adding to the family
A Child’s Health, A-Z: a comprehensive glossary of childhood illnesses, emergencies, and medical situations, including advice on how to handle them.

Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions

I’m Two Years Old – Everything your two-year old wants you to know about parenting
By – Me as told to Jerri Wolfe
Although I’m only two, I know grown-ups can use my help-especially when it comes to understanding me. Since I’m just learning how to use words, I speak more with my actions. But it’s very frustrating and confusing when grown-ups – especially my parents-misinterpret my simple needs as (can you believe it?) acts of childishness!
So I’ve compiled this easy-to-use, situation-by-situation guide that illustrates why I act as I do. It demonstrates how grown-ups can better communicate with me so that my twos won’t be so terrible, and I can learn the things I need to know.
Covering everything from bedtime battles to potty training, I’M TWO YEARS OLD lets you know what’s on my mind-so you won’t go out of yours.

Children Are People Too – The Case Against Physical Punishment
By – Peter Newell
Children Are People Too summarises the arguments against hitting children the fundamental injustice, the risk of injury, links with more serious child abuse, with aggression, delinquency, etc., assesses the prevalence of physical punishment in the UK and other countries; and sets out the current legal framework and how it should be changed. It also documents the long struggle to end school corporal punishment in the UK
Peter Newell is an advocate for, and commentator on, children’s rights. He worked at the Children’s Legal Centre from 1982 to 1988, and is the father of two young children.

Foster Home Breakdown
By – David Berridge & Hedy Cleaver
This book provides the first detailed examination of foster placement break down in twenty years, a period in which major developments have occurred regarding services for deprived children. David Beridge and Hedy Cleaver present research findings on a range of foster placements – planned long-term and intermediate fostering – in three contrasting social work agencies. In particular, the impact on placement outcome of three themes is explored; the early rearing histories of children; the maintenance of children’s social networks; and placement-related factors.
The author’s offer a more intensive study of ten placements in which foster home break down occurred and discuss the perspectives of all participants – social workers, foster parents, natural parents, teachers and children. The maintenance of children’s social networks – with natural parents, siblings and peers – is shown to be especially important for successful fostering. Finally, they consider the future development of foster care and advocate the further development of a more specialist, professional approach.

Wards Leaving Care – A Longitudinal Study
By – NSW Department of Community Services

You and Your Child – For Parents of Children Who Have Been Sexually Abused
By – Beth Parker

Parenting Tough Kids – Simple Proven Strategies to Help Kids Succeed
By – Mark Le Messurier
Parenting Tough Kids is a practical handbook offering engaging ways to bring about constructive changes for children and teens who ‘do it tough’; who learn differently, recent differently and think they can’t.
While the primary audience is for parents who experience difficulties with their children, at the heart of the book is a healthy collection of real case studies and ‘hands on’ ideas useful to every mother and father.
Parenting Tough Kids delivers simple proven strategies to improve the behavior, organisation, learning, friendship & emotion of all children.

Parenting the Hurt Child – Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow
By – Gregory C. Keck, PH.D. & Regina M. Kupecky, L.S.W.
When a child is adopted, he can arrive with hurts from the past-pain that unts his emotional growth, and your family’s life, too. At some point your parent’s dreams can shatter, and raising a hurt child becomes more like a burden than a blessing.
But don’t give up. With time, patience, informed parenting, and appropriate therapy, your adopted child can heal, grow, and develop beyond what seems possible now. From insights gathered through years of working with adopted kids who have experienced early trauma, Georgory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky explain how to manage a hurting child with living wisdom and resolve, and how to preserve your stability while untangling a thorny heart.
“We hope that what we share will give strength, courage, and commitment,” write the authors. “We hope you will tap into own resources and creativity to become that parent you’ve always wanted to be.”

Why can’t I sleep at Nana’s any more – Death, divorce and the grandparents
By – Leila Friedman
A woman nurses her terminally ill daughter, and looks after her grandchildren while their father is at work. The blow comes at the funeral. ‘Have the children’s clothes ready in the morning”, say the new widower. They don’t belong in your family now.
When parents die divorce or desert their children, the special bond between grandparents and their grandchildren can easily be ignored. Grandparents are the forgotten group – “strangers” in the eyes of the law, with no custodial rights.
Leila Friedman is Convener of the Grandparents’ Support Group, part of the Older Persons’ Action Centre. A grandmother herself, she has been active in highlighting the trauma caused when the grandparent/grandchild bond is severed.
She has spoken to hundreds of grandparents, parents, teenagers and children. Their stories here confirm that while there may be ex-husbands and ex-wives, there is no such thing as and ‘ex-grandparent’.

Volunteering – A Current Perspective
By – Joy Noble
Volunteering: A Current Perspective examines many aspects of volunteering. The book tells us who volunteers and why, what volunteers do, the political, economic and social implications of volunteering, and how volunteer contribution might be more effectively utilized.
The book identifies potential sources of support for volunteering and looks to a future in which both voluntary and paid workers help us move towards a more democratic, caring and informed society.
Policy makers, administers, service providers, educators and students will find this a challenging and extremely useful analysis of volunteering is emerging as a vital force in Australian society.

The best I can be – Living with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or effects
By – Liz Kulp
“Mon, I want to write a book about what it’s like to have FASE (fetal alcohol syndrome/effects) I think people need to know……..and so began Liz’s and my journey in writing. The Best I Can Be – Living with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Effects. Liz was right; it was a story that needed to be told. Fetal Alcohol Exposure is a leading cause of mental retardation in the western world. It is estimated one out of 10,000* children born each year in the United States has FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) and one out of 1000** has FAE (fetal alcohol effects). Research and experience has proven on label is not better or worse than the other. Over 40,000 newborn US children each year will have to learn to cope with this disability. It is time we came out of denial – alcohol consumption during pregnancy is not safe. Let Liz and take you on our journey – it is a journey of hope, of dedication and of perseverance.
Thank you Liz for your courage to share your story -Mom
*NOFAS National Organization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
** Teratology 1977, Nov.

A Child at Heart – The story of a foster child
By – Chris Baxter
A Child at Heart is the soul-stirring true story of a child in foster care. Five-year-old Marie needed a home for ‘only a few weeks’. Like a tsunami, her arrival overwhelmed the comfortable and ordered lives of the author and his wife. The ‘few weeks’ stretched into months, then years. Imperceptibly, things were changing. Warfare gave way to an uneasy and exhausted truce, then, finally, to deep and mutual love. Previously repressed under the weight of premature responsibility and anxiety, a delightful child emerged through fantasy and play. Hers became a charmed household of children’s tales and make-believe into which the author and his wife plunged willingly. It was a dreamlike existence set against an uncertain future. And like all dreams it could not last.

UNSTANDING YOUNG CHILDEN IN FOSTER CARE
By – Elaine Atkinson
In this booklet we have described typical behaviours of children in foster care coping with separation and loss.
Fostering is hard work and difficulties inevitably arise. We would like to express our support for you, in taking on this challenging task. Tricky situations, unexpected reactions, do not have to be faced alone. You are working as part of a team which includes you, the child’s family and the agency staff. By contacting the Foster Care Association of WA you can meet up with other foster carers who have experienced or are experiencing similar situations. If you need extra assistance you can also ask the social worker about Divisional Psychologist help. Like yourselves, the people you contact for advice or help may not have all the answers. However, they usually have some new ideas and perspectives, as well as lending welcome support.

‘When the children arrive….’
By – The Mirabel Foundation
The Mirabel Foundation was established in 1998 to assist children who have been orphaned due to parental illicit drug use. This resource book was written specifically to assist kinship carer’s address and identify some of the issues and concerns that may arise in this situation. It recognises the impact of taking on the care of these children and the ramifications of a loved one’s substance abuse.

Street Kid – One Child’s Desperate Fight for Survival
By – Judy Westwater
Everybody thought her father was a charming spiritualist preacher. Only Judy lived in the shadow of his terrifying cruelty.
Judy was three years old when her con-man father snatched her from her mother. Kept like a dog in his backyard, she ate from bins to stay alive.
Judy was then taken to South Africa, where her life became unimaginably appalling. Beaten, treated as a slave and subjected to horrifying cruelty, escape was her only option. But living on the streets was just as dangerous. Through sheer determination she survived.
This is her amazing story

Tiny Titan – Journey of Hope
By – Ann Yurcek
In 1989, the Yurcek’s sixth child, Becca was born with a rare genetic disorder, and while she struggled to survive, her family tumbled into poverty. This is the true and inspirational story of their journey out of poverty and the many miracles they received along the way.
In the spirit of giving back, they adopted and reunited five siblings separated in foster care. And for their new children they fought for resources in mental health and child welfare with the same tenacity they had fought for Becca in the medical world. Other’s said their journey was impossible, but they proved them wrong.

Deliver Me from Evil
By – Alloma Gilbert
“When I was a little girl I believed what I was told over and over again: that I was evil, that I deserved to be tortured because I was the Devil’s child…..
When the foster-mother Eunice Spry was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for abusing the children in her care, the details of her cruelty were so sickening they shocked the country. Alloma Gilbert was one of Spry’s young victims, sent to live with her at the age of six and left at her mercy for eleven brutal years.
Eunice used her own twisted religious beliefs as an excuse for punishing her foster children. When she took them to live on an isolated farmhouse, the abuse escalated to terrifying levels – a stick was thrust down Alloma’s throat so often it was stained red with blood, she was starved and survived only by secretly eating pigswill, and the vicious beatings were relentless. At the age of seventeen she finally escaped but, alone in the outside world, she fell prey to abusive men. It was the birth of her baby daughter that saved her, that finally taught her what love really is.

Almost Perfect
By – Kelly Denley
Kelly Denley has always dreamed of the perfect family, and of being the perfect mum, but as the mother of eight she discovered that almost perfect was actually just perfect enough….

Turning Stones – My Days and Nights with Children at Risk
By – Marc Parent
Why does and infant die of malnutrition? Why does an eight year old hold a knife to his brother’s throat? Or a mother pushes her cherished daughter twenty-three floors to her death? Marc Parent, a city caseworker, searched the streets – and his heart – for the answers, and shares them in this powerful, vivid, beautifully written book.

Brother & Sister
By – Joanna Trollope
We all need to know where we come from, where we belong. But for David and Nathalie, this need to know is more urgent than for most people, because they are adopted. Brought up by the same parents, but born to different mothers, they have grown up, fiercely loyal to one another, as brother and sister.
Their decision, in their late thirties, to embark upon the journey to find their birth mothers is no straightforward matter. It affects, acutely and often painfully, their partners, the people they work with and, most poignantly, the two women who gave them up for adoption all those years ago, and who have since then made other lives, even borne other children.

Troubled Teens – Strategies to help troubled teenagers
By – Denise Bewert
This is a book for parents, carers and other adults who are concerned about teenagers taking part in problematic and risky behaviours.
Trouble Teens provides information, case studies and intervention strategies for a range of high risk behaviours including substance abuse, self-harm, careless sexual activity, road risk and criminal activity. It also discusses a range of issues that may impact on a teenager’s behaviours such as family separation and divorce, grief and loss, anxiety, being a victim of sexual assault, body image concerns and depression.
Troubled Teens shows adults how they can help teenagers make the right choices to keep themselves safe and healthy in the transition period from childhood to adulthood.

Tackling Teens – Strategies for parenting pre-teens and teenagers
By – Denise Bewert
Parenting a teenager is a complex and demanding task.
What can you do to prepare for a successful journey through the teenage years?
What can you do to help your child make the right choices when it comes to issues such as the ready access to drugs, underage sex and alcohol abuse?
You have more power than you may think to influence your child’s choices.
Tackling Teens shows parents how they can help their child make the right choices and guide them successfully through these often difficult times of physical, social and emotional change.

Childhood Interrupted – Growing up under the cruel regime of the Sisters of Mercy
By – Kathleen O’Malley
An Extraordinary memoir about the loss of childhood – In 1950 Kathleen O’Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother after eight-year-old Kathleen was raped. They were committed to an Industrial School run by Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the notorious Magdalene Holmes. Kathleen and her sisters were subjected to hard labour, floggings, near starvation and humiliation until they were permitted to leave when they reached the age of sixteen.

Scarred – one girl’s triumph over shocking abuse and self-harm
By – Sophie Andrews
Sometimes pain is the only escape……Growing up, Sophie carried a terrible secret. She was her father’s slave, in the most horrific ways imaginable.
At just a few months old she was adopted by a couple that seemed comfortably off and perfectly respectable to the outside world. But behind closed doors, Sophie’s childhood was a living hell. Her father spent the next decade grooming her for abuse and when Sophie’s mother left for good, that very night, he told Sophie that from now on, she would sleep in his bed.
Unable to cope, Sophie spiraled into suicidal misery. She began to self-harm to try and escape the agony. But one day she went too far and at 16, ended up in a psychiatric unit. It was here that she finally confronted the horrors of home and began the painful journey of rebuilding her life.
A phenomenally courageous woman, Sophie now works for Samaritans and helps other young people in need. Harrowing yet compelling, this is a searing and truly inspirational account of overcoming the worst abuse and self-harm.

Nightmare at NEERKOL – If you ever wondered what they look like……here they are “The Gate Of Hell”
By – Garnett Williams
Garnett Williams was 8 years old when he was removed from his mother’s care and placed with his brothers and sisters in St Joseph’s Orphanage at Neerkol, near Rockhampton. For the next five years he hardly saw his siblings, and suffered unimaginable cruelty and physical and sexual abuse, while under the care of the Sisters of Mercy.

Deliver Me From Evil – “when I was a little girl I believed what I was told over and over again: that I was evil, that I deserved to be tortured because I was the Devil’s child…..
By – Alloma Gilbert
When foster-mother Eunice Spry was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for abusing the children in her care, the details of her cruelty were so sickening they shocked the country. Alloma Gilbert was one of Spry’s young victims, sent to live with her at the age of six and left at her mercy for eleven brutal years.
Eunice used her own twisted religious beliefs as an excuse for punishing her foster children. When she took them to live on an isolated farmhouse, the abuse escalated to terrifying levels – a stick was thrust down Alloma’s throat so often it was stained red with blood, she was starved and survived only by secretly eating pigswill, and the vicious beatings were relentless. At the age of seventeen she finally escaped but, alone in the outside world, she fell prey to abusive men. It was the birth of her baby daughter that saved her, that finally taught her what love really is.

Hope’s Boy – a mother’s life broken by mental illness. A son saved by her love.
By – Andrew Bridge
When Andrew was seven years old he was pulled from the arms of his screaming mother and hustled away by a social worker and a police escort. By the time the little boy has been forced to scavenge food from rubbish bins to survive. His mother was schizophrenic and she could barely take care of herself, let alone her child. Andrew spent a decade in foster ‘care’ that was a nightmare of indifference and casual cruelty.
But this is a success story of endurance and hope. What pulled Andrew through was the rock solid knowledge of his mother’s love, her most precious gift. Andrew not only survived, he became a top lawyer and now works as an advocate for children in foster care.

If I stay – what would you do if you had to choose?
By – Gayle Forman
For seventeen-year old Mia, surrounded by a wonderful family, friends and a gorgeous boyfriend, decisions seem tough, even when they’re all about a future full of music and love, a future that’s brimming with hope. But life can change in an instant.
A cold February morning….a snowy road…and suddenly all of Mia’s choices are gone. Except one. As alone as she’ll ever be, Mia must make the most difficult choice of all.

Brutal – Surviving Westbrook Boys Home
By – Al ‘Crow’ Fletcher
‘I drew my knees up and huddled in the corner.” How the hell did I get myself into this mess?” I kept askin’ myself.’
This is the story of Al ‘Crow’ Fletcher who, as a young teenager, was placed in the state reformatory for boys at Westbrook, new Toowoomba in Queensland.
What follows is the harrowing description of life inside one of Queensland’s most feared institutions for orphaned, disadvantage and Aboriginal youth.
Brutal is the story of every boy’s worst nightmare come true. Thousands of children spent their formative years in fear and misery. All were scarred by the experience. Some perished. Many ‘graduated’ to adult institutions.
Crow Fletcher survived to tell his tale. This is it.

The Forgotten Children
By – David Hill
In 1959 David Hill’s mother – a poor single parent living in England – reluctantly decided to send her sons to Fairbridge Farm School in New South Wales where, she was led to believe, they would have a good education and a better life.
David was lucky – his mother was able to follow him out to Australia – but for most children, the reality was shockingly different. From 1938 to 1974 thousands of parents were persuaded to sign over legal guardianship of their children to Fairbridge to solve the problem of child poverty in Britain while populating the colony. Now many of those children have decided to speak out. Physical and sexual abuse was not uncommon. Loneliness was rife. Food was often inedible. The standard of education was appalling.
Here, for the first time, is the story of the lives of Fairbridge children, from the bizarre luxury of the voyage out to Australia to the harsh reality of the first days there; from the crushing daily routine to stolen moments of freedom and the struggle that defined life after leaving the school. This remarkable book is both a tribute to the children who were betrayed by an ideal that went terribly awry and a compelling account of an extraordinary episode in Australia-British history.