Advocacy campaign Share Your Care aims to address a lack of foster carers

The Share Your Care campaign is an initiative backed by three Wimmera-based agencies, Uniting, MacKillop Family Services and Goolum Goolum, and aims to address a lack of foster carers.

One of the campaign's champions and former Horsham mayor, Pam Clarke, visited Horsham Plaza on Thursday to raise awareness for the issue.

"Opening a home to some child or teenager who needs a safe place to sleep is really important," Ms Clarke said.

"We have a young foster care person and she's been an absolute delight and brought so much into our lives, we've had enjoyed having her."

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Ms Clarke said she, along with the Share Your Care campaign, wanted to help show people that foster caring can be incredibly rewarding, using her own experience to break down stigmas associated with foster caring.

"People think they can't do it if they're not home all day, if they're working or if they're single but anyone can do foster care, anyone at all, whether they're an older married couple like us," she said.

"We've been Darby and Joan for 20 years, all of a sudden we've got a teenager in the house!"

"Instead of being a boring couple, looking at each other across the room, we've got this young person living with us who brings us so much joy."

Ms Clarke said the young person she and her husband were fostering had been with them for three years.

"Of course there have been ups and downs, she's had a difficult life," Ms Clarke said.

"It's not always beautiful... but it's the same with any teenage person."

"It's been so lovely to see her blossom into the young woman that she is; it's been thrilling to be part of that growth."

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Ms Clarke said sometimes all the kids in foster care needed was to know someone cared.

"If you can give a safe place for a child to live and some unconditional love, it goes a long way," she said.

"There's a lot of people who just think they are troubled teenagers or troubled kids, but it's not like that."

It doesn't take much more than that to change a child's life, according to Ms Clarke.

Ms Clarke said the couple had also taken in a teenager their son knew from school after finding himself homeless.

"He'd gotten into drugs and kicked out of the unit he was living in... he came for a weekend and stayed two and a half years," she said.

"We got him off drugs through year 12 and helped him get him a job, and he's never looked back.

"We also took a young Chinese woman in, who needed two months until she got a work visa; she stayed five and a half years."

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Ms Clarke said growing up in a welcoming home had given her the disposition to take people into her home.

"We've always had a very open home. I'm one of six children, my husband's one of six children," she said.

"My older brothers hitch-hiked everywhere. They would bring hitchhikers home.

"My dad was a travelling stock buyer; he'd bring hitchhikers home. I've always grown up helping people."

Ms Clarke wanted potential carers to know they would be part of a more extensive support network and wouldn't be thrown in the deep end.

"There's a huge amount of support for both the child and the carer, you're not left on your own," Ms Clarke said.

"There's always someone there you can just pick up the phone and ask for advice.. and there's training beforehand."

For more information on the Share Your Care campaign, visit shareyourcare.net.au.

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