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A teenager in a beanie looking at a phone

Two anonymous primary school-aged boys walk and balance on playground equipment in a park.

A close-up of a smiling woman with short dark hair and a fringe.

"This particular model has a much-higher carer allowance because of the nature of the program itself and the time commitment needed by the carer,"
she said.

A graph shows number of children in residential care across Australia (most to least): Qld, SA, NSW, VIC, WA, NT, TAS, ACT.

Table shows number of young people in care across Qld, with residential places rising from 814 in 2017-18 to 1,582 in 2021-22.

A man with red hair and a beard smiles. He is wearing a light grey suit and white shirt as he stands in front of a blurry house.

"It really is staff coming and going, coming in and out of children's lives, so there's very little stability around what normality is and, more often than not, these kids don't go to school."

"It costs, on average, about $583 a day and, if you compare that to residential care, which can go up to $2,300 a day sometimes,"
she said.

"Even if we were able to scale up TFCO … it's going to be quite a number of years before turning the tide in Queensland."
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