Community Services Directorate ACT: Its Role in Foster Care Explained

Foster carers in the ACT work with two distinct sets of professionals — their agency caseworker and the government's Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS). Understanding the difference between the two, and knowing which one holds authority over which decisions, is one of the most practically important things a new carer can learn.

The confusion is understandable. The Community Services Directorate (CSD) and the foster care agencies operate in the same space, often attend the same meetings, and both care deeply about the same children. But they have fundamentally different roles — and when you are trying to get a decision made, knowing who actually has the power to make it matters.

What the Community Services Directorate Is

The Community Services Directorate (CSD) is the ACT Government agency responsible for child protection, out-of-home care, and a broad range of community services in the Territory. Within CSD, the operational child welfare function is carried out by Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS).

CYPS is the statutory body — the arm of government with legal authority under the Children and Young People Act 2008. It is CYPS that investigates concerns about a child's safety, applies to the ACT Childrens Court for Care and Protection Orders, and holds legal responsibility for children placed in out-of-home care.

When a Care and Protection Order is granted, parental responsibility for the child does not transfer to the foster care agency. It transfers to the Director-General of the Community Services Directorate. This is the legal reality that underlies everything about how foster care works in the ACT, and it has direct practical consequences for carers.

The Split in Authority: What It Means in Practice

Under the Children and Young People Act 2008, the Director-General holds parental responsibility for children on Care and Protection Orders. In practice, this means:

The Director-General (CSD) is responsible for:

• Major medical decisions — surgery, specialist referrals, significant treatment decisions
• Legal proceedings — applications to the Childrens Court, review of Care and Protection Orders
• Decisions about whether a child is restored to their birth family
• Changes to a child's living arrangement (including placement moves)
• Decisions about a child's long-term care plan and permanency pathway

The authorized carer is responsible for:

• Routine daily decisions — meals, bedtimes, homework, playdates
• Routine medical care — GP visits, pharmacy pickups, dental check-ups
• School and education — attending parent-teacher interviews, excursions, subject selection
• Cultural and religious activities
• Day-to-day recreational decisions

The bridge between these two zones of authority is a legal instrument called the Specific Parental Authority (SPA). The SPA is granted by the Director-General to the authorized carer, and it formally delegates "daily care responsibility" for the specific decisions listed in the document. If a decision falls within the SPA, the carer can make it without waiting for approval. If it falls outside the SPA, the carer must obtain consent from the child's CYPS case manager.

CYPS: The Child's Caseworker

Each child in out-of-home care in the ACT is assigned a CYPS case manager — a government-employed social worker who manages the child's legal orders, restoration plans, and long-term care goals.

The CYPS case manager is not the same as your agency caseworker. They have different roles, different employers, and different accountabilities:

In practice, you will have regular contact with both. Your agency caseworker is your primary support contact — the person you call at 11pm when a child in your care has a crisis. The CYPS case manager is the government official who signs off on major decisions and manages the child's legal status.

Why the "No-Man's Land" Problem Happens

One of the most common complaints from foster carers in the ACT — documented in both government reviews and carer community groups — is getting caught in a bureaucratic gap between the agency and CYPS.

The scenario typically goes like this: a carer needs a decision made. They ask their agency caseworker, who advises that the decision requires CYPS approval. The carer contacts the CYPS case manager, who is unavailable, on leave, or has a caseload that means the response takes days. Meanwhile, the child is waiting.

This is not a bug in the system — it is a structural feature of the dual-authority model. The ACT is a small jurisdiction, and CYPS case managers carry significant caseloads relative to their headcount. The SPA is designed precisely to reduce the frequency of this bottleneck by delegating routine decisions to the carer. The challenge is that new carers often don't know what is and is not covered by their SPA, and the instinct is to check rather than act.

Understanding the SPA in detail — what it covers, how to request an expansion of the delegations it contains, and when you genuinely do need to wait for CYPS — is one of the most useful practical skills a new ACT carer can develop.

The Next Steps for Our Kids Strategy

CSD's approach to out-of-home care is currently defined by the Next Steps for Our Kids 2022–2030 strategy. This eight-year reform agenda has six priority areas:

1. Safety and love — every child in care should feel secure and have meaningful relationships
2. Material basics — stable housing, clothing, food, and access to routine services
3. Connection to family and culture — particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who are significantly over-represented in ACT out-of-home care
4. Health and wellbeing — physical and mental health support, with a focus on trauma-informed care
5. Learning — educational support, School of Origin preservation, and post-school pathways
6. Participation — children and young people's voices informing decisions about their own lives

For carers, the strategy translates into practice through the therapeutic frameworks that agencies use (including the PACE model — Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy), the emphasis on birth family contact and restoration, and the push toward Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination through ACCOs (Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations).

The strategy also extends care provision to age 21 and establishes intensive case management pathways for young people with significant trauma behaviors who would previously have "aged out" of the system without adequate support.

CSD's Oversight of Foster Care Agencies

CSD does not just work alongside the agencies — it regulates them. All foster care agencies operating in the ACT must be approved by the Director-General as "suitable entities" under Chapter 15 of the Children and Young People Act 2008. Only approved suitable entities can authorize carers.

This means the agencies — Barnardos, OzChild, and Key Assets — operate under a combination of their own organizational standards and the mandatory Children and Young People Care and Protection Organisation Standards 2025 imposed by CSD. CSD conducts compliance monitoring and can, in principle, withdraw an agency's approval to operate.

For carers, this oversight structure provides a degree of consumer protection. If your agency is not fulfilling its obligations — if the carer support is inadequate, if mandatory training is not being delivered, if reports are not being acted on — CSD is the regulatory body with authority to intervene.

In practice, formal escalation to CSD is rare. Most issues between carers and agencies are resolved through internal processes or through the Carers ACT – Kinship and Foster Carers Advocacy Service, which provides independent support to carers navigating disputes without requiring them to go directly to the government.

Getting the Most from the System

The carers who navigate the ACT system most effectively tend to be those who understand the architecture clearly from the start — who know what CSD holds, what the agency holds, what the SPA delegates, and what the CYPS case manager is actually empowered to decide.

The Australian Capital Territory Foster Care Guide maps this authority structure in detail, including practical guidance on how to work effectively with your CYPS case manager, how to use the SPA to maintain daily life without bureaucratic delay, and how to escalate when decisions are unreasonably held up.

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