News and resources from the Office of the Children's Guardian Out-of-home care Directorate - November 2025
Out-of-home care Directorate update
The full suite of resources for the Code of Practice is now available. We will continue updating and adding to the resources to ensure they remain current and relevant.
We attended ACWA's annual general meeting and heard about the great work of non-government agencies in the sector. We also attended a Ministerial Round Table on relational care organised by ACWA and the Centre for Relational Care which was well attended by agencies. It was a great opportunity to discuss how we can better achieve relational care and understand what the current challenges are.
The Office of the Children's Guardian Annual Report 2024-25 was recently tabled in NSW Parliament. Out of home care and adoption (from page 50) summarises our work with designated agencies, register statistics, information sharing and capacity building.
Code of Practice
The Code of Practice Implementation Handbook supports agencies to understand the new accreditation criteria which will come into effect on 1 October 2025.
The handbook outlines:
- the 8 practice requirements against which agencies will be assessed
- how we assess compliance and evidence we may seek
- the accreditation process and pathways
Resources to support implementation of the Code of Practice
We have collaborated with Associate Professor Tim Moore to create four short videos to support agencies' understanding and practice of meaningful participation for children and young people in out-of-home care. These videos can be found under practice requirement 2 'Meaningful participation in practice with Associate Professor Tim Moore'.
This year Monash University interviewed young care leavers to understand their experiences of record keeping and documentation in out-of-home care. This video can be found under practice requirement 4 'Case plans, documentation and record keeping'.
Quarterly statistics on the registers
Sector reports, resources and events
Empowering Carers to Transform Lives, National Foster & Kinship Care Conference 28-30 November 2025
With a focus on wellbeing, recovery and healing through health and therapeutic services, the conference aims to address specific needs for carers and children in relation to therapeutic parenting to enable carers to be empowered to transform the lives of the children and young people in their care.
Professional supervision: how and why?
The Centre for Community Welfare Training is offering a professional supervision course next year.
When it works well, supervision is a key resource for the professional development of the staff member and for client outcomes. Supervision can be the most important way that people develop practical expertise for their job. However studies suggest that supervision often takes only a ‘quick fix’ approach.
If you have any questions please contact us:
Phone: (02) 8219 3796
Email: accreditation@ocg.nsw.gov.au
Web: www.ocg.nsw.gov.au
