Adelaide Hills foster carer Julie Critchley knows it takes a village to raise a child.

She also knows that giving vulnerable children in state care a home can be both rewarding and isolating, unless you have a good support crew to lean on.

That is the idea behind Mockingbird — a foster care program hailing from the United States, designed to link up foster parents to create an extended family-like environment.

“Just being able to talk to people about what’s happening in your life, what’s happening in your home with someone who gets it, is huge,” Ms Critchley said.

The program, run by Life Without Barriers, connects six to 10 foster families to make a “constellation” with an experienced carer as a central port-of-call for advice and a helping hand.

Ms Critchley is that experienced carer for the Lobethal constellation, which has 11 kids in the group, ranging from 18 months to 15 years.

“They all get along and blend like cousins,” she said.

“We’ve just hung out at parks, had a barbecue, we’ve had Animals Anonymous come to us where the kids all got to touch and feel animals.

“We’ve been to the zoo, we’ve been on a camping trip together, that was fantastic, and we’ve got another one booked for later this year.”

The number of kids entering state care in South Australia is rising, as foster carer retention becomes more difficult.(ABC News: Meagan Dillon)

Foster parents can rely on each other for favours that cannot be facilitated by the Department of Child Protection (DCP) and can vent without involving bureaucrats.

“I got this phone call from a foster parent who had just fallen over, and they had to call an ambulance,” Ms Critchley said.

“I was able to come and get the child and had her for a couple of nights – it’s the sort of thing that departments can’t do, they just don’t have the capacity as it was on a weekend.

“In a normal family, you would ring aunt so-and-so or a great friend to help out.”

Ms Critchley says Mockingbird does not have the “constraints” of DCP and can support carers outside the Monday to Friday work week.

50 kids supported in SA

Mockingbird started in New South Wales in 2019 but has shown the most growth in South Australia.

Six constellations have been established in Adelaide and the Hills since September 2021.

One constellation has collapsed.

Those constellations – in Hope Valley, Seaton, Marino, Fairview Park, Strathalbyn and Lobethal — support 45 foster care families and about 50 children.

New South Wales and Victoria each have two constellations.

Life Without Barriers SA director Lucy Wade said Mockingbird is built on the concept, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.(ABC News: Luke Pike)

Life Without Barriers SA director Lucy Wade said there was an appetite to grow the program and form new constellations across the country.

“I think anyone who has raised children will understand the value of being part of an extended network and community,” she said.

“Like any extended family, there’s ups and downs but the beauty of the model is that carers support each other through those ups and downs.”

She said the program had improved carer retention and created better placement stability for the children.

Mockingbird creates strong bonds

Flinders University researcher Helen McLaren tracked Mockingbird in Adelaide for two years and found it improved carer retention, allowed siblings to be placed either within the same family or constellation, and reduced carer-reliance on DCP.

The researcher said she was at the launch of a new constellation and remembered seeing the children running around and handing out birthday party invitations.

“The carers were telling me the children in their care had never been to a birthday party,” she said.

“They often send invitations out to other children at school, and no one comes, or they don’t get invited to other children’s birthday parties.

“For the first time, these children were experiencing handing out invitations and having other children come to their birthday party.”

Flinders University associate professor in social work Helen McLaren tracked the Mockingbird program for two years.(ABC News: Guido Salazar)

She said a lot of the foster children were often stigmatised and not accepted at school, but were able to form connections with other kids in the same constellation.

“It’s really nice to see the children connecting, having friends and being together.”

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in children entering state care and a decline in South Australians willing to take them in.

As of May 31, there were 4,874 South Australian children in state care, with numbers on the rise. 

About 84 per cent of those children are in kinship or foster care, but 725 are in residential care.

Not-for-profit organisations, such as Life Without Barriers, have reported strong declines in the number of foster carers willing to take in children.

Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard said Mockingbird helped to build a “wider extended family network” and hoped it could be further expanded.

“Mockingbird empowers carers to understand what other carers experience, and children and young people in care to understand what other children and young people go through,” she said.

“Creating spaces where carers and children and young people can experience that sense of extended family with many people looking after each other, particularly at those hard moments, is really special and nurturing.

“We would love to see more home hubs across the state and look forward to more foster carers and more young people benefiting from this very special and valuable program.”

Child Protection Minister Katrine Hilyard said Mockingbird has shown positive outcomes.(ABC News: Lincoln Rothall)

Ms Critchley said there were “challenges within the system”.

“Education can be a big challenge. A lot of these kids don’t fit into normal education settings,” she said.

“Some of the behaviours can be challenging. But once you understand where the behaviours are coming from, that’s when you learn how to help them.”

She said the positive behaviour changes are obvious when the child has a “connection to a family or a carer”.

“One child not being able to be at school for more than 10 or 15 minutes a day to be able to stay at school without issues the whole day – that’s huge,” she said.

“It makes it worth it, to help kids overcome some of the barriers they have.

“It really does change your life, just like having a baby changes your life.”