Ensuring equal opportunities for Children in Out of Home Care : what is being done?

Children and young people in Out-of-Home-Care are a group of vulnerable children who suffer discrimination and experience under-achievement on a daily basis in Australia through no fault of their own; they are placed in the care of state governments. The paper examines the problems and issues out of home care (OOHC) children face and goes on to describe possible solutions. OOHC children are not designated as a special equity group in education for financial support from central or state governments. Because of this situation, the identity, numbers, problems and issues are not recorded or identified for additional support, despite the problems of disruption in their education. The University of Western Sydney has introduced several widening participation programs specifically for raising awareness and aspirations of OOHC children and young carers to engage or re-engage them with their education and assist them to progress to further or higher education. Also research has been initiated to evaluate the effectiveness of such programs and identify what works