The baby arrived at Sofie’s house at 7pm on a Friday night, along with a few bags of clothes, toys, nappies and food. No one had fed her since that morning. The case worker sat on Sofie’s couch, commenting on the decor.

Sofie*, an early childhood educator, did not know the baby well. The Melbourne childcare centre where she worked had agreed to enrol the then months’ old baby after a request from child protection, who hoped daycare would provide some stability while they worked with the baby’s mother. The baby had only attended a handful of days. Sofie had occasionally given her a cuddle in passing.

But the baby’s name reminded Sofie of her own adult daughter. Perhaps that was partly why, less than four hours earlier, a phone call to the childcare centre had made her so upset.

The voice on the line was a child protection worker. Would someone there be able to look after baby Lily* for the weekend?

“I said, ‘no, we are not working here Saturday and Sunday’,” Sofie says. “And she said, ‘no, no – one of you. We are at the court and the judge is asking us to look for somebody.’”

Sofie is an effervescent 49-year-old born in South America. She is confident and thorough, but English is her second language, and she thought something must have been lost in translation. Surely they were not asking what it sounded like they were asking? But when the centre’s owner and manager returned soon afterwards and spoke to the child protection worker, she confirmed the request.

The court had decided the baby was too much at risk and had just that morning been removed from her mother. They needed to find a foster or kinship carer. There was no one else, they said – and it would just be for a couple of days, to give them some time to sort things out.

“My heart was breaking,” Sofie says. “I started crying. I called my husband and I was emotional … he said, ‘It’s a big responsibility, but if she has nowhere to go’…”

Nina*, the owner and director of the childcare centre, says: “At that moment, we just wanted to help the situation. We were saying: how about we do this together?”

Nina and Sofie share their story while perched on child-sized chairs in the centre’s front room. Brightly coloured artworks made by very small hands are tacked to the walls and a little table nearby is set for one. The children are out in the garden with the other educators, their chatter and squeals occasionally floating down the hall.

After Sofie had called her husband, Nina called the child protection worker back. “I was the one that spoke to the person on the phone and said, ‘This is very short notice. The only way we can see this being done is we do this together, 50-50.’”

The case worker “did not question anything”, Nina says. “All she said was, ‘Yeah, you can do this, but I just need one person’s name on the paperwork.’”

So Sofie gave hers.

In the first call, the child protection worker said the care would just be for the weekend. “Like babysitting, you know?” Sofie says.

“Then when they start getting my details, they’re saying, ‘but maybe it will be a week’. And how am I to say no? I just say, OK,” Sofie says.

“And then Nina asked a question and they said, ‘but maybe it will be a month’. And I was like, OK, I’m not going to tell my husband that it’s [now] a month.”

It is now more than six months since that call. And Sofie still isn’t sure how much longer Lily will stay with her.

Do anything to place a child with a family

Sofie is classified as a “kinship carer” by the department, despite only having a peripheral relationship with the child when she took her on. Kinship care – where a child is placed in care with a relative or close family friend – is significantly more common than foster care in Victoria.

But it is not at all common for the carer to have had such a minimal pre-existing relationship with the child.

Anne McLeish, director of Kinship Carers Victoria, says placing such a young child in a family home would have been critical to the case workers.

“If they couldn’t find family members and a foster carer, that child was going to go into an institution,” McLeish says. “And quite rightly, the department will do anything – beg, borrow, steal, do anything – to place a child with a family rather than have that happen.”

A spokesperson from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing said they were unable to comment on individual matters, but that the government has invested $4.8bn in the system “to improve outcomes”.

“Foster and kinship carers play a critical role in caring for and providing a nurturing environment for children and young people who cannot live safely at home,” the spokesperson said.

But the Community and Public Sector Union’s state secretary, Jiselle Hanna, says evidence shows “child protection workers are experiencing ongoing burnout due to chronic understaffing and pressure – this is a structural issue, not an individual one”.

“When workers don’t have enough time or support, it affects how often children are seen, how quickly cases are addressed, and ultimately their safety.”

‘She was so happy eating’

Sofie began seeing developmental delays in Lily almost immediately. She wasn’t sitting on her own or moving around much, and the bottle Sofie gave her would slip out of her hands. “She was like a toy, a frozen baby,” Sofie says.

Lily’s medical history was unclear and scant information about her allergies was contradictory. When Sofie and Nina sought clarity from child protection, their concerns were brushed off with the suggestion to just “do the best thing for the child”.

In some areas, they had extraordinary success.

Sofie knew from the centre records that Lily had trouble sleeping. She did not know what foods the baby had been introduced to – that was not part of the centre’s usual role. But with no guidance forthcoming from child protection, she began feeding Lily what she would feed any other child. Lily’s appetite roared to life.

“She was so happy eating!” Sofie says. And she began sleeping through the night almost immediately. She had been simply, profoundly, hungry.

Other situations were more complicated. Sofie was assured Lily’s vaccinations were up to date but the records showed they were overdue. Later, Sofie and Nina learned that a specialist had referred Lily for important blood tests and X-rays that the case workers said they would arrange with Lily’s mother. Months passed, her case management team changed three times and the tests did not get done until Sofie organised them herself.

Basic items – such as a cot and a car seat – that were supposed to be supplied by the department upon Lily’s arrival at Sofie’s house were also delayed by months. The case worker who dropped Lily off refused to leave the car seat, saying Sofie would be reimbursed if she bought her own. It was three months before Sofie was repaid. She borrowed a cot from the childcare centre that first night but the department did not provide a bed for Lily until six months had gone by.

Lily had regular supervised visits with her mother during business hours and was ferried to and fro by a departmental worker. The workers were always different and appeared to know little about the child’s specific needs, including medical appointments notified by Sofie and Nina. On multiple occasions, Sofie and Nina say, those workers turned up with expired department identification, no working-with-children checks, and sometimes with no ID at all.

“It just feels like they haven’t been properly trained and the child doesn’t feel like a child; it feels like a file to them. It just gets passed on,” Nina says.

McLeish says the regular changing of case workers and administrative delays and errors are persistent issues for carers. “It’s as a direct result of ongoing cuts to the staff in child protection,” she says.

The shared care arrangement Nina and Sofie had proposed that Friday night, which the case worker had verbally agreed to, was scotched within the first week, amid disputes with Lily’s case worker over the child’s care.

So Sofie and her husband have been Lily’s primary carers ever since.

Who pays?

Then there is the matter of the childcare fees.

Sofie works full-time, so a condition of care was that Lily’s enrolment at the centre would be extended to five days.

The case workers seemed not to understand that there would be a gap fee payable even with the federal childcare subsidies, Nina says. Then they would not tell her who was responsible for paying it. Eventually Nina sent the bill, nearly $900 by that point, to the department, where it languished for months until she threatened to withdraw Lily’s enrolment.

Sofie will soon take over the subsidy, after administrative disputes with the department and Centrelink, but is worried that when she does the department will expect her to be responsible for additional fees she cannot afford.

The financial implications have been a point of particular anxiety for Nina, too. Late last year, the centre had two other children under child protection orders, who stopped coming without notification. In that case, months-long delays in paperwork from the department resulted in Centrelink reclaiming the whole subsidy and the centre losing more than $22,000 in unpaid fees.

The situation also raises questions about the department’s perception of these women’s work and on whose behalf it is being performed.

Sofie and Nina were approached as possible carers for Lily because they are educators at the centre she attends. But both women feel that the boundaries between their professions and their personal caring roles have been blurred.

Sofie receives the lowest rate of carer payment. She had to take a week of unpaid leave earlier this year to care for Lily when the child was ill. Her paid leave had been exhausted after she herself was in hospital late last year.

She and her husband are deeply fond of Lily. But around the time she was in hospital, Sofie was ready to stop. It was a responsibility that had come upon her without warning and she was fed up with the strain of dealing with the department.

Lily had been in respite care with Nina while Sofie was in hospital and, when Sofie and her husband came to collect the child, she ran towards them with her arms open and a huge wide smile – “so happy to see us after a week!” Sofie says.

In the car, Sofie and her husband, sobbing, decided maybe they could keep her for a little while longer.

The plan and hope have always been to reunify Lily with her mother. But the thought of Lily going to another foster home unsettles Sofie. “Maybe they are not going to look after her like we do.”

Lily has thrived under their care. She now walks and talks, and plays and laughs, and even understands Spanish.

“You treat her like your own child,” Sofie says.

*Names have been changed