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Foster children deserve a brighter future, and that takes commitment

Posted on 12 Aug 2026

By Denis Moriarty, founder and group managing director, Our Community

Shutterstock foster child
Maybe we should invest in vulnerable children as well as cute puppies? Pic: Shutterstock

Our Community's founder and leader, Denis Moriarty, says fostering a child was his worst nightmare, until he met John ...

I recently saw a story on Instagram claiming that the English TV talent show judge Simon Cowell intends to leave his estimated $600 million fortune to charities that help abandoned animals.

The full story is slightly more nuanced: Cowell has reportedly spoken of supporting both animal welfare charities and children’s charities. Nevertheless, it raises an uncomfortable question about our charitable priorities.

Why are we often more emotionally moved by the story of an abandoned dog than a neglected child?

I love animals. Bruno our naughty beagle is adorable. They deserve protection from cruelty, neglect and abandonment. The people who rescue and care for them do valuable work.

Denis Moriarty

But when enormously wealthy people direct vast fortunes towards animals while children are being abused, neglected and moved from home to home, I cannot help feeling there is something profoundly wrong with our moral compass.

Ten years ago, my partner Brendan and I decided to become foster carers.

I should confess that I was not someone who had always dreamed of fostering children. To be honest, it was my worst nightmare. But Brendan, the wise one, won out and I thank him every day for such foresight. At that point in my life, I didn’t give much thought to children at all. But we opened our home, and John arrived.

His mum had significant mental health issues and simply could not look after him. She didn’t have a partner, and there were no other family members around. John had been through a lot of trauma.

In many ways, John arrived abandoned: frightened, wounded and uncertain whether he could trust the people around him. He needed safety, patience, nourishment, opportunity and, above all, a family that would not give up on him.

Brendan and I eventually welcomed John permanently into our family.

Today, he is 21. He is funny, warm, smiling and quite remarkable.

Last Saturday evening, the three of us attended a dinner organised by MacKillop Family Services. I went along expecting the sort of worthy but slightly tedious event where we would eat dinner and listen to speeches about foster care.

I could not have been more wrong.

MacKillop Family Services is among Australia’s finest community organisations. It works across foster and kinship care, family support, education, disability and other essential community services. It was MacKillop that brought John into our lives a decade ago.

On Saturday night, John returned, not as a frightened child entering care, but as a confident young man invited onto the stage to speak about what it had been like to be a foster child and what foster parents could do to help kids like him.

“Behind every statistic is a child carrying a story they did not write and consequences they did not deserve.”
Denis Moriarty

He is now completing his university placement at MacKillop. With luck, that may lead to a job helping children who are experiencing some of the same fear and dislocation he once experienced.

That is the circle we should be celebrating: a child enters the care system after being failed by adults and emerges determined to serve others.

John was joined on stage by another young person who had come through foster care with MacKillop’s support and is now completing the first year of a law degree.

These young people challenge the grim assumptions too often made about children in care. With security, encouragement and people who believe in them, they can thrive. They can study, work, contribute and become the finest of citizens.

But it does not happen by accident.

Australia has about 45,000 children and young people living in out-of-home care at any given time. They are not somebody else’s children and not somebody else’s problem. They are our collective responsibility.

Behind every statistic is a child carrying a story they did not write and consequences they did not deserve.

Across Australia, foster carers open their homes to these children. They rearrange their lives, absorb the anxiety and disruption, attend appointments, navigate bureaucracies and slowly build trust with young people who have every reason not to trust adults.

Those carers deserve far more recognition and support than they receive.

So do organisations such as MacKillop Family Services, whose skilled and committed staff stand beside children, families and carers through extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

By all means, give money to protect animals. But before directing millions, or hundreds of millions towards them, look at the children waiting for a safe bed, a dependable adult and somewhere they can finally belong.

A rescued animal needs care. A child needs all of that and an entire future.

If you have money to give, consider giving it to an organisation such as MacKillop Family Services. If you have room in your home and your life, consider becoming a foster carer.

You may not believe you are the sort of person who can do it. I certainly did not.

Then John arrived.

Ten years later, I cannot imagine our family, or our lives, without him – he is our superstar.


Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise that helps the country's 600,000 not-for-profits.

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