Principal Economist, NSW Department of Community Services

Abstract

The New South Wales Department of Community Services is a state child protection agency in Australia. It has developed a stock and flow discrete-event simulation model that forecasts the population of children in out-of-home care. This will allow planning and funding of out-of-home care services, as well as forecasting carer payment expenditure. It utilises estimates of unit costs for different service components and makes some assumptions about the average service packages and carer payment rates to be provided for the different types of children. Children have been found to stay longer in relative/kinship care compared to foster care. The biggest cause of out-of-home care population increases is the greater use of relative/kinship placements since 1998. The Model incorporates only five parameter shifts but its out-of-home care population projections closely predict observed past data, despite excluding all random changes. Forecasts are being continually updated as relevant new information becomes available.