When Rose Taylor reflects on how different her life could have been if she had not met the teacher who became her foster carer, she is overcome with emotion.
The Newcastle-based woman spent her formative teenage years in foster care placements and refuges, and was homeless before she experienced stable living.
Now, decades later, Ms Taylor works at the coalface of that same system, which is experiencing a national shortage of carers.
She said her story demonstrated how important it was for more people to step up.
Left 'terrified'
When she was 12, Ms Taylor left for school one day unaware she would not return home.
Strangers, who she later learned were foster care case managers, took her out of class without warning and told her she was not safe living with her parents.
"I was absolutely terrified," Ms Taylor said of being placed into emergency care.
By the time she was almost 16, she had shifted between five foster care placements, two refuges and a semi-independent living program.
Left feeling unwanted and hopeless, the teenager felt she was better off alone living on the streets, and stopped telling the child welfare authorities her whereabouts.
"If I couldn't have my family, I wanted nobody," Ms Taylor said.
"I lived with this false facade that I was hardened, and I didn't care.
Teachers who 'saw through'
Despite being homeless, Ms Taylor found "solace in school" and turned up each day.
When other students went home to their parents, she would find a place to roll out her sleeping bag and hang her uniform over a park bench for the night.
"It was terrifying and cold," she said.
Ms Taylor had been living on the streets for weeks when someone took notice.
"I had a teacher who saw through [the facade] and could see I was trying to tell the world something," she said.
"When I would blow-up and storm out of a classroom, this teacher would turn up in the playground or wherever I was, sit with me and say, 'What's happening? Are you okay?' Which are questions no-one had asked."
Eventually the teacher found another colleague to care for Ms Taylor full time, and together they took her under their protective wing.
"It's not like they walked into my life and I was magically better … [but] while I was working things out they just approached me with care, curiosity and gentleness," she said.
After more than a year of stability with both teachers as her caring guardians, Ms Taylor started to see a brighter future and finished her schooling.
"I had a hard time [at 15] seeing beyond a week, let alone doing the HSC and seeing what the future looks like … that was enormous," she said.
Loading...
More foster carers needed
Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows as of June 30, 2021, there were about 9,000 foster care households across the country.
However, by June 2025, that number had dropped to about 5,900.
Life Without Barriers, which connects young adults and children with a safe environment, said about 45,000 children across Australia needed care.
The not-for-profit's youth and family services boss in New South Wales, Deanne Carroll, said cost-of-living pressures had contributed to a national carer shortage.
"There's a whole range of impacts, but generally it seems to correlate with cost-of-living increases, which has impacted directly on our need for carers."
Ms Taylor, now 43 and with a family of her own, is using her upbringing to enlighten people about how they can make a difference in a child's life.
For the past decade, she has worked as an operations manager at Life Without Barriers in Newcastle, helping recruit people who could be well-suited for foster caring.
"We've got a national foster carer shortage, which is really why I've decided to speak up," Ms Taylor said.
"At the end of the day [these children] are our future adults, our future leaders, and we can all play a role [in helping]."
