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Permanent Care and Adoptive Families (PCA Families) is a not-for-profit member-based organisation representing families formed by permanent care, kinship care and adoption in Victoria. Established by parents from this community in 2003, we continue to be guided by the lived experience of our members. We take a child-centred and family-focussed approach to supporting strong and stable families.
PCA Families offers you free trauma informed independent and confidential advice, support and services informed by research and lived experience, including practical information, advocacy and referrals to other services.
We hope you will join our community by becoming a member.
Many families permanently caring for children from permanent care, kinship care and adoption backgrounds can at times struggle to cope with the day-to-day realities of parenting children who experience the often life-long effects of trauma.
Families often have few or no support services available to them once an order is granted. This lack of support can exponentially increase the risk of family breakdown.
PCA Families helpline, flexible funding, better futures and peer support programs are frequently the only specialist support available to families post-order.
Outcomes for many of the 10,000 children and young people currently in out of home care in Victoria include homelessness, poor job prospects, fractured relationships and, too often a trajectory into the criminal justice system.
It doesn't have to be this way. In addition to providing more support to ensure less children enter care in the first place and that children can be reunified to their birth parents in a timely way wherever possible, there is now overwhelming international evidence that when we offer children alternative permanent homes we give children a sense of security and stability that leads to better life outcomes.
However, it's not enough to make a court order. The international evidence shows that the availability of peer support and other consumer-led support services independent of government and placement agencies is critical to ensuring these alternative families succeed. It is the non-judgemental lived experience underpinning our model that permanent care and adoptive families trust. It can help keep families together.
To understand more about the importance of supporting permanent care and adoptive families, read Permanence and Stability, "The missing ingredients for Victoria's most vulnerable children".
PCA Families is a child safe organisation. We believe that children have the right to feel and be safe at all times.
PCA Families recognise the importance of protecting the privacy and the rights of individuals in relation to their personal information.
PCA Families will seek consent from you to contact a third party about your circumstances unless there is an immediate risk of harm identified for a child, young person or another person.
Any client information used for PCA Families reports will be de-identified to protect the identity of children and families.
Our privacy policy tells you how we collect and manage your personal information.
We respect your rights to privacy under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)(Act) and we comply with the Act’s requirements in respect of the collection, management and disclosure of your personal information.
Our privacy policy is here
In the spirit of reconciliation PCA Families acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
PCA Families supports diverse families including LGBTQI+, culturally and linguistically diverse, and single parent led families.
