Foundations Care

Foundations Care is an Australian not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating safe, supportive, and nurturing environments for children, young people, families, and carers across New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia. With over 20 years of service, their mission is centered around ensuring that every child feels safe, accepted, and valued within their family and community.

Comprehensive care services form the heart of their work. Foundations Care provides a continuum of out-of-home care options—including emergency, respite, short-term, long-term, foster, kinship, and residential care—alongside youth justice and caseworker support programs. These services are tailored to meet the diverse needs of young Australians who cannot live with their families.

Carer support is central to their model. The organisation recruits, trains, and mentors foster and kinship carers throughout the entire fostering journey. They offer ongoing workshops, clinical training, 24/7 caseworker support, regular home visits, and professional development—all backed by behavioural science and trauma-informed practice. Carers also receive financial allowances to ensure children's everyday and specialist needs are met.

Child-centered and culturally appropriate placements are a priority. Foundations Care ensures placements are carefully matched to a child’s age, background, and cultural identity. They place special emphasis on maintaining connections to family, culture, community, language, and heritage—particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children—supporting identity, belonging, and stability.

Collaborative, evidence-driven approach. To optimise outcomes, Foundations Care partners with government agencies, behavioural scientists, Aboriginal elders, community leaders, researchers, and other non-profits. Their practice is shaped by research, and their staff recruitment and training reflect current behavioural science innovations, yielding outcomes that “many in the industry never thought possible.”

Impact and geographical reach. The organisation supports over 300 children, young people, and their foster or birth families annually and operates across multiple offices in NSW, QLD, and WA, with its national headquarters in Helensvale, Queensland.