KEY POINTS:
A multinational foster care company which has been criticised for paying its directors almost $750,000 a year will open an office in Manukau next month.
British-based Foster Care Associates, which also operates in Ireland and Australia, threatens to overturn the traditionally voluntary basis of New Zealand foster care by paying its caregivers fulltime salaries.
In Britain it pays £350 ($908) a week per child and in New Zealand director John Rabarts says it expects to pay $600 to $1000 a week, depending on the care needs of each child.
In 2005 the company was reported to be charging local British councils £800 ($2078) a week for each child, making enough profit to pay its eight directors annual fees averaging £285,000 ($741,000) each.
A Massey University researcher and former head of the Family and Foster Care Federation, Jill Worrall, said New Zealand needed a debate on whether it was appropriate to make a profit out of disadvantaged children who end up in state care.
"We are seeing a move into professional foster care where the organisation running it is a profit-making organisation unashamedly," she said.
"They state quite clearly that they are in the job so they can make a profit, whereas most foster care has been offered in New Zealand from an altruistic point of view where the caregiver gets paid to cover costs but that's all."
A Hawkes Bay community worker, Terry Gosset, said making a profit out of children in care would be "bordering on exploitation".
"My concern is that this is a form of colonisation," he said.
"This is quite serious stuff, particularly as 51 per cent of the kids in care, and a higher percentage in CYFS residences, are of Maori and Pacific origin."
But Mr Rabarts said the New Zealand company, named Key Assets NZ Ltd because caregivers are the "key assets" for children in care, aimed to offer more support to both children and their caregivers in return for the high fees it expected to charge.
"We'll take the more difficult end of the market," he said.
Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) already pays higher fees for fostering high-risk youths through non-profit agencies such as the Youth Horizons Trust.
A CYFS spokeswoman said Key Assets NZ had not yet applied to be a CYFS provider.
Mr Rabarts, who was asked by Foster Care Associates to set up its New Zealand branch, is a high-profile former CYFS official, former national manager of the foster-care and adoption agency Open Home Foundation, and chaired the Family and Foster Care Federation in 2001-2002.
He said the company would initially seek individual foster-care contracts in South Auckland, with a limit of one child per family. Caregivers will be required to give each child a separate bedroom and to have at least one adult at home fulltime.
"The difference is that in terms of providing our service we expect to be somewhat wider, including looking to educational support of the children, extension to life skills training for children and especially counselling towards independence," Mr Rabarts said.
In Britain the company uses more than half of its £800 fee per child to provide training, social workers, therapists, education liaison officers, day programmes for children who are not in school, transport to school and other activities, and outings for both fostered children and the caregivers' own children.
Foster Care Associates' international director, Estella Abraham, is due in Auckland this week to oversee the launch of the business.
* www.thefca.co.uk
* www.keyassetswa.com.au
