A lonely little girl sitting on a lounge with a foster carer's death threat ringing in her ears as she was questioned by a welfare officer is one woman's memory of childhood.
Caroline Carroll has told the royal commission into child sexual abuse it is essential that children in care always had someone they could trust in their lives.
This person should be a constant from the time they were placed in care, no matter how often the child is moved.
But Ms Carroll, placed in a foster home when she was 15 months old, was moved between five homes and in all that time never had a relationship with anyone she could talk to.
The chair of the Alliance of Forgotten Australians, she said there was plenty of abuse in the homes she was sent to but she would never have spoken about it.
"We used to be dressed up, sat on the lounge and a welfare officer would come - rarely - and the foster parent was always in the room with us and you were threatened with death before that happened", she said.
Ms Carroll has added her voice to a growing chorus of care-leavers and support and advocacy groups arguing for changes, including cross-jurisdiction rationalisation of Australia's out-of-home care system.
An emerging theme in the second day of the hearing into Australia's system of out-of-home care is that children, especially those who are moved often, have no one they can turn to while they are in care.
Ms Carroll's organisation helps people who were in care up to the 1980s. But on Monday a panel of recent, young care leavers told the commission they too were afraid to speak out if they had a problem.
They were afraid they would not be believed and be moved on, they said.
Ms Carroll echoed that on Tuesday.
"I was blamed. It was the child's fault anyway, whatever went wrong. When a placement broke down it was a child's fault and that's what you carry with you forever."
The commission has heard there are great variations in the quality, training and support of carers across the country.
Share
