Responding to Intersecting Needs: Disability, Out-of-Home Care and the System Response

An international and cross-sector conversation on supporting care leavers with disability

On 12 August 2025, OPEN hosted a powerful and insightful forum exploring the intersection of disability and care experience, and the systemic responses that shape outcomes for young people. The forum featured presentations from Dr Claire Baker, a UK researcher with expertise in children in care and disability, alongside practitioners from FamilyCare, Anglicare, and Yooralla, and a lived experience advocate, the session highlighted the challenges and opportunities in supporting care-experienced young people with disability. Together, they shared insights from practice and research to deepen understanding and drive collaborative action

Setting the Scene

This OPEN forum was convened in response to ongoing concerns from practitioners, researchers, and advocates in the child and family services sector.  Increasingly we are all hearing from those on the frontline about challenges posed at the intersection of disability and care experience, a  critical area of unmet need, with young people navigating fragmented systems that often fail to provide coordinated or sustained support.

Care leavers with disability face significant barriers to housing, education, employment, and therapeutic services, compounded by systemic gaps during transitions between state and federal systems, and lack of culturally safe, inclusive, person-centred approaches.

The forum sought to elevate and amplify this challenging area through fostering cross-sector dialogue, bringing together local and international perspectives to explore how research, practice, and lived experience can inform more responsive and integrated service systems. 

Purpose of this forum

This forum was the first of what we hope will be a series of OPEN activities spotlighting the urgent issue of children in out-of-home care with disability. It aimed to spark conversation, share expertise, and build our understanding of the problem.

The need is pressing and we hope that this event will be a  starting point to build a community committed to grappling with these challenges and driving long-term, meaningful change.

If you are interested in driving change, we invite you to join us in working out what comes next:

• surfacing what is already happening but not widely known,
• highlighting promising approaches and programs, and
• bringing the right decision makers into the room to hear frontline voices.

Together, we can strengthen knowledge, amplify awareness, and build the momentum needed for lasting systems change.  Reach out to OPEN to register your interest in participating in our OHC/Disability initiative.  

Key Messages

The forum surfaced a range of insights from across research and practice. The following key messages reflect shared priorities for improving outcomes for children in care with disability and preventing their criminalisation.

• Listen to care experienced young people: Their voices must shape policy, practice, and service design. Be curious: hear what your young people say about their lived experience of disability and care experience
• Start early: Transition planning and disability support must begin well before age 18.
• Collaborate across systems: No single service can meet the complex needs alone.
• Invest in workforce capacity: Practitioners need training, time, and support to navigate systems.
• Build on promising practice: Models like Aspire to Be (Anglicare/Yooralla partnership)  show what’s possible with commitment and coordination.

Presentation 1: Dr Claire Baker – Disability and care experience: insights from England

Dr Claire Baker, an independent UK researcher with over 25 years’ experience with a particular focus on Out of Home Care and the voices of care leavers, shared findings from her recent report with Coram Voice. Her presentation focused on:

• Definitional complexity: Disability is understood differently across education, health, and social care systems, often creating barriers to support.
• Data gaps: National datasets in England do not publish disability data for children in care or care leavers, despite local authorities collecting it.
• Key findings:
  • 13% of care leavers were recorded as having a disability, though self-reported data from the Bright Spots Programme showed 27%.
  • Mental health conditions were frequently excluded from official disability codes, despite being central to young people’s lived experience.
  • Care leavers with disability reported lower wellbeing, less financial stability, and reduced feelings of safety and inclusion.

Claire’s presentation included a moving narrative from Susan, a care-experienced disabled young woman. Susan’s story highlighted the systemic failures in diagnosis, support, and transition planning, and the resilience required to overcome them.

Claire closed with a call to action: improve data collection, listen to young people, and design services that flex to meet their needs. She also shared her upcoming current work on “Magic Moments” – a strengths-based approach to identifying promising practice in supporting care leavers with a disability.

Additional Resources:

Presentation 2: FamilyCare: Navigating the NDIS in Rural and Regional Family Services

Sue Caines, Manager of Disability and Early Years at Goulburn Valley FamilyCare, presented findings from a practitioner-led paper co-authored with Integrated Family Services staff. Her reflections focused on:

• NDIS complexity: Staff reported feeling underprepared and overwhelmed by the demands of navigating NDIS systems for families.
• Systemic gaps: The withdrawal of state-funded disability services left families without foundational supports, especially in regional areas.
• Case study: A mother with mental health challenges and children with disability struggled to access services due to transport barriers, waitlists, and lack of outreach. Despite securing NDIS packages, the family missed out on foundational work to improve functioning and prevent future crisis.

Sue emphasised the need for place-based supports, simplified systems, better training for family services workers and the importance of practitioner voice in shaping reform.

Additional Resources:

• Bridging the gap: Social work practice challenges in navigating support for families with disabilities

Presentation 3: Aspire2Be – How We’re Going

The final presentation showcased the Aspire2Be program, a partnership between Anglicare Victoria and Yooralla. Led by Anne Welfare, Lauren Cervai, Akaash Kumar, and Jaya Mathew, the team shared:

• Program origins: Developed to address gaps in disability support for children in residential and out-of-home care.
• Scope and impact:
  • 170 young people supported to date.
  • 57% had no prior NDIS access.
  • Significant increases in NDIS funding achieved through coordinated advocacy.
• Challenges:
  • Delayed diagnoses due to trauma masking disability.
  • Fragmented systems and inconsistent consent processes.
  • Placement instability disrupting continuity of care.
• Case example: A six-year-old in foster care received a funding increase from $35,000 to $95,000 through targeted advocacy and collaborative planning.

The team emphasised the importance of early intervention, cross-sector collaboration, and listening to young people’s goals. They also highlighted the need for sustainable funding and broader sector access to similar partnership models.

Additional Resources:

• OPEN Symposium 2024 presentation recording: Aspire 2 Be – Better support for children in care with a disability

Panel Discussion: Lived Experience and Systemic Change

The panel discussion featured all presenters and lived experience advocate Bailey, a Swinburne University student and peer mentor to care experienced students. Bailey’s reflections were a highlight of the session, offering a raw and honest account of navigating disability and care systems:

• Barriers to access: Services were overwhelming and inaccessible, even with support workers.
• Lack of continuity: Transitioning out of care felt abrupt and unsupported.
• Need for trusted adults: Bailey called for regular health check-ins and someone to advocate when young people don’t know what they need.

Panellists echoed Bailey’s insights, emphasising the need for curiosity, relationship-building, and systemic flexibility. The panel noted the importance of challenging age-based cut-offs embracing interdependence over independence, and the value of early planning and place-based supports.

We acknowledge that Bailey was misgendered during the event. We sincerely apologise for this and would like to affirm that their correct pronouns are they/them.

Next Steps

OPEN invites attendees to continue the conversation. If you’re interested in joining a working group or community of practice focused on care leavers with disability, please reach out via OPEN@cfecfw.org.au.  Together, we can build a stronger collective voice for change.

Speaker details: