Informal Kinship Care in Queensland: How It Works and What It Means

What Informal Kinship Care Actually Means

Informal kinship care is when a grandparent, aunt, uncle, older sibling or family friend takes on the daily care of a child through a private arrangement — not through the child protection system. The child's parent might have asked you directly, might have left and not come back, or might be dealing with something (addiction, illness, prison) that means they cannot care for the child right now.

No government agency placed the child with you. There is no court order. There may not even be a written agreement with the parent. You simply stepped in because the child needed you.

In Queensland, this kind of arrangement is not automatically recorded as a statutory placement with Child Safety. The Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety can assess concerns after a referral; statutory intervention applies when a child is assessed as being "in need of protection" under the Child Protection Act 1999. Many private kinship arrangements do not result in departmental intervention.

How Informal Care Differs From Formal Kinship Care

The critical distinction in Queensland is whether the Department of Child Safety is involved:

Informal kinship care: No child protection order exists. No one from Child Safety approved you as a carer. The biological parent(s) retain formal legal parental responsibility, even if they are absent. You have no state-funded carer allowance.

Formal kinship care: Child Safety assessed the child as needing protection and placed them with you under the Child Protection Act. You were assessed and approved as a kinship carer. The Childrens Court of Queensland may have issued a temporary custody order, a child protection care agreement, or a long-term guardianship order. You receive a fortnightly caring allowance from the state.

Foster care: Similar to formal kinship care, but the carer is not a relative — they are recruited, trained, and approved by a foster care service. Foster carers receive the same state allowances.

The practical consequences of this distinction are enormous. A formal kinship carer of an 8-year-old receives $702.94 per fortnight from the Queensland government alone, plus all the Commonwealth payments they are eligible for. An informal carer of the same child receives nothing from Queensland.

Why the Gap Exists

Queensland's state allowances are tied to statutory child protection intervention. When the state has not intervened and the arrangement is private, there is no general recurring state-funded allowance for informal carers outside the statutory system.

Advocacy organisations including COTA Queensland have pushed for a formal financial entitlement for informal carers. Parliamentary inquiries have acknowledged the gap. But Queensland has not yet created an entitlement-based payment for carers outside the statutory system.

What Informal Carers in Queensland Are Entitled To

While you miss out on state allowances, Services Australia considers actual physical care for care-assessed benefits, along with each payment's other eligibility rules. At least 35% care may meet the care threshold for Family Tax Benefit. Other payments have separate conditions, including:

• Family Tax Benefit Parts A and B — income-tested family assistance
• Double Orphan Pension — $81.60 per fortnight if both parents are deceased or one is deceased and the other is imprisoned 10+ years, confined indefinitely to a psychiatric institution or nursing home, or of unknown whereabouts after reasonable enquiry; an admitted refugee child may also qualify if both parents live overseas or their whereabouts are unknown
• Carer Allowance — $162.60 per fortnight if the child is under 16 and has a severe disability or medical condition requiring daily care
• Additional Child Care Subsidy (Grandparent) — up to 100 hours of subsidised child care per fortnight for principal grandparent carers providing at least 65% of care and receiving an eligible income support payment; the subsidy can cover up to 100% of fees up to 120% of the standard CCS hourly rate cap

You can also enrol the child in a Queensland state school, get them onto your Medicare card, and access community support services like the Time for Grandparents program (1300 135 500).

Could You Become a Formal Carer?

If Child Safety becomes involved — either because someone reports the family or because you contact them yourself — the department may assess the child as needing protection and approve you as a kinship carer. That would unlock the state allowances.

But there are trade-offs. Formal involvement means Child Safety oversight, mandatory reviews, case plans, and restrictions on decisions you can make without department approval. Many grandparents prefer the independence of an informal arrangement, even at the cost of the state allowance.

It is not a decision to make lightly, and it is not one you can make unilaterally — Child Safety initiates the process based on their own assessment of the child's circumstances, not based on a carer's request for funding.

Getting the Full Picture

The Queensland Kinship Carer Support guide covers every arrangement type — informal, formal, parenting orders, consent orders — and maps each one to its specific entitlements, forms and agencies. It includes a comparison table so you can see exactly what changes if your arrangement type changes.

See more Queensland guides →