Christmas is the season for giving, they say, and Canberrans are giving hundreds of presents this year to disadvantaged children through the local police charity, Kids in Care.

The annual charity drive ensures every child supported by ACT Child and Youth Protection Services receives a gift on Christmas Day, an ACT Policing spokesperson said.

This year, Kids in Care has expanded beyond the Canberra region to Queanbeyan and Cooma, said Senior Constable Alex Uren, a Kids in Care board member.

“We really love being able to bring Christmas to those children who might not otherwise experience it.”

Eight hundred presents have been collected so far. Kids in Care will collect children’s toys up to Christmas Eve, through giving trees at Big W stores and the AFP headquarters.

Some toys will be kept back for Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS) and foster children, chair Steve Hill said. “If they’re suffering, we get them a toy.”

Kids in Care began in 2013, when Detective Sergeant John Giles attended a job at Christmas time. At the house, he found four small children who were severely neglected, SC Uren said.

“The little girl asked John if she could take him inside and show her his Christmas tree, which she described as beautiful. She took him by the hand and inside they went. And what he saw inside was basically a tattered branch with one or two baubles attached. He was mortified, and he knew those children were not going to experience Christmas like most kids should and every kid should be able to.

“So, from that day, he went back to the station and raised some money, and was able to get Christmas presents for those kids that year. In speaking with the Child and Youth Protection Services, he realised that there were many more kids in the same position who also wouldn’t experience Christmas.”

So the following year, Sgt Giles raised funds, and collected and handed out presents. 

Kids in Care became a charity in 2019, Mr Hill explained. “We decided that it was a little bit too big to just be an ad hoc group of people getting together at Christmas time buying a few presents.”

In fact, once the charity was formed, it grew.

“Kids aren’t just in a vulnerable situation at Christmastime,” Mr Hill said. “Sure, that’s when it really strikes home to them when they’ve got no presents to open on the 25th of December. It’s really heartbreaking.”

Every quarter, Kids in Care buy $3,000 worth of vouchers to give to CYPS to give out to children.

This year, Mr Hill said, the charity was a “great boon” for couch surfing teenagers who had no homes to go to.

At Easter, Kids in Care bought 300 lots of Easter eggs. “Not only should kids have Christmas presents, they should have an Easter egg,” Mr Hill said. 

And a few months ago, a boy couldn’t go to school because his bike broke; Kids in Care bought him a new one – “And he hasn’t missed a day of school, have you, mate?”

ACT Ministers Rachel Stephen-Smith and Mick Gentleman also attended the launch.

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