After entering the foster care system when she was just four months old, Tee spent her childhood feeling isolated, alone, and like "an outsider".
Most of her early years were spent moving between various foster parents, kinship placements, group homes and mental health care.
"Turbulent … would be how I describe my childhood," she said.
"Sometimes things are good, and then everything came crashing down."
The trauma she endured during her young life would come out in behaviours that were confronting and difficult for her carers.
"I was putting myself at risk, my friends at risk. I was in very risky situations," she said.
"I didn't give a care in the world."
Tee's early childhood is echoed in the stories of many children in state care.
About 50,000 Australian kids are in out-of-home care after being removed from their families because of neglect or abuse.
The majority are placed in kinship or foster care.
Many of these children have had traumatic experiences, and in response they can have extreme, unpredictable or explosive emotions, including behaviour that is disruptive and destructive to themselves or others.
This can range from drug abuse and violence to self-harm and sexualised behaviour.
Despite their risk profile, experts say most children in out-of-home care cannot access adequate therapeutic support, leaving their carers struggling to manage the child's reactions to their damaging experiences.
Joseph McDowell from the Create Foundation, a national body which advocates for children in out-of-home care, said the state did "very little for most young people to address the trauma that they've experienced before coming into care".
"We can't just do a bandaid approach and say, 'Well, we'll give them somewhere to live and that'll solve the problem,'" he said.
More children are coming into care, fewer people are putting their hands up to be foster parents, and fewer families have a non-working parent at home.
In earlier times, children were often placed in state care because they were orphaned or removed from single mothers for religious or social reasons.
Now, experts say almost 100 per cent of kids in care are traumatised from neglect or abuse.
Alongside that, there's growing evidence about trauma, but many foster and kinship carers don't have the skills to manage children with the most challenging behavioural responses.
That's why experts including Leah Bromfield, the director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia, believe that the traditional foster care models are outdated for children with the most complex needs.
"Some children have wonderful experiences of care, they feel loved and are part of a family. That's not the case for all of our children in care," Professor Bromfield said.
"Ultimately somebody actually has to know how to therapeutically respond to trauma."
Different models of care are being trialled, including one which aims to give children like Tee more support and stability
'Trust' and 'healing' from professional carer
The New South Wales government supports Professional Individualised Care (PIC), a not-for-profit that pays a psychologist or other therapeutic expert $100,000 a year to leave their day job and become a full-time foster parent.
This model is only used for kids who have ended up in motels and group homes after multiple foster placements have not worked out.
Leeroy Tipiloura, an Aboriginal man from the Tiwi Islands, was one of those children.
Like Tee, he also moved between various foster and kinship-care arrangements from a young age.
"[I was] removed from [my] family, so put into … countless, I really cannot remember how many … different placements, so bounced around a lot," he said.
Before he turned 10 he ended up in a group home, with staff coming and going on shifts.
"Kids suffer a lot of abandonment, and when they are moving too much … having too many faces, it just starts to desensitise the kid," Leeroy said.
Leeroy got lucky when he was nine and met Brett Peter, a youth worker with whom he would form a lifelong bond.
Brett had specialist trauma training, which gave him a deep understanding of children's reactions to abuse and neglect.
Brett worried about what the future held for Leeroy, then a little boy terrified of being abandoned again.
"He really just went, 'You won't come back … no-one comes back,'" Brett said.
So, Brett and his wife took Leeroy in and gave him a home.
"Relationship is the foundation of all … trust. Trust lies there, healing lives there; that you've got someone in your life that's there for you no matter what," Brett said.
There were challenges as Leeroy grappled with his early trauma, which the now-25-year-old said would manifest in destructive behaviour.
"I was very troubled, and it wasn't easy," he said.
When Leeroy acted out, Brett met his behaviour with softness and compassion.
"I'd see challenging behaviours which could be really confronting and could be taken personally. But I started viewing them as an expression of a human in pain," Brett said.
The 49-year-old Byron Bay resident is now among about 30 PIC carers in New South Wales.
Brett credits consistent and expert support from PIC for enabling him to respond well when traumatised children exhibit the most challenging behaviours.
"That relationship model of care goes right across an organisation. I trust my colleagues. I ring, I reflect with our clinical psychologist every week. My coordinator I speak with almost daily," Brett said.
"I've done this a long time before I was with PIC. That certainly wasn't my experience elsewhere.
"I wouldn't reach out because I didn't trust the response I would get. Within PIC — very different."
'Incredible' results at a lower cost
The PIC model has operated in Germany for decades where independent research shows kids in PIC are 14 times more likely than kids in other foster care models to stay with their carer.
According to PIC's chief executive, Jarrod Wheatley, their program has had an 85 per cent success rate in keeping children out of residential and psychiatric facilities.
"If you give children half a shot, some time to heal and process trauma, [and] enough relational stability, the vast majority of children do something incredible," he said.
"They can rewire their brains and believe in relationships again."
Children benefit from professional help, but the PIC model also supports its carers through regular check-ins with psychologists and coordinators.
PIC is backed by Create Foundation, which says the program is "incredibly effective" at addressing children's trauma.
The NSW Department of Communities and Justice describes PIC as an evidence-based program "providing positive outcomes for children in care".
It can also be cheaper than traditional foster care, according to the department.
"Professional care models are generally more cost-effective than models of residential care, although specific costs can vary," a spokesperson said.
It's estimated that children with the most complex needs who receive out-of-home care in group homes and motels can cost the state at least double what PIC costs.
The PIC model targets high-needs kids housed in motels and group homes, who can cost the state more than $500,000.
By comparison, the ABC understands the professional model costs about $270,000 a year.
Better addressing the trauma of survivors of childhood abuse and neglect may help also reduce their lifetime health costs, estimated by Deloitte Access Economics at $5 billion a year.
As adults, they have higher rates of mental and physical problems — including obesity, heart disease and diabetes — than the rest of the population.
"Every single condition we look at, people with an abuse history are doing worse," said health economist Leonie Segal from the University of South Australia.
Survivors of childhood abuse are also more likely to face police, courts and prison, she said.
"If we don't help them before they leave foster care, they're having children, they have children young and because of their own abuses, if that hasn't been resolved, they'll often end up traumatising their own child," Professor Segal said.
"We end up in this intergenerational, never-ending cycle of abuse and neglect with huge costs. And yet we could prevent this."
Professor Segal said the PIC model should be expanded across the country to help more vulnerable children.
A 'good role model'
While Tee has reservations about professional foster carers getting paid, she sees merit in ensuring carers have greater expertise.
Throughout her childhood she never had a stable home, and said her carers were not equipped to help her with the post-traumatic stress disorder she carried from her difficult upbringing.
"They didn't have the know-how to deal with post-traumatic stress," she said.
Tee said she would also like to see children in state care given greater stability.
She left state care years ago, at a time when children were effectively kicked out of the system when they turned 18.
As of this year, all states and territories have committed to extending that care until kids turn 21. But it came too late for Tee.
"I was given basically an hour and a half to vacate the property on my 18th birthday," she said.
Tee became homeless, sheltering from cold nights in shop doorways.
"I've slept in public bathrooms, train station lifts. Park benches. I think I cried myself to sleep that night," she said.
After nine months without a stable home, Tee saved enough money to start renting her own place.
Now, at 21, she's in university studying psychology and criminology in a double degree.
"I didn't want to wake up and be 30 and be like, 'What have I got to show for my life?'" she said.
"I want to eventually be able to work frontline in childrens court or in child protection."
Like Tee, Leeroy also wants to help others.
He credits Brett's care and support for his progress in life and for nurturing his cultural and family connections.
Leeroy now hopes to return home to the Tiwi Islands to be a support worker in his community.
"I would look at a young Leeroy today and I would … see that he needs a good role model," he said.
"And that's what I'd like to be."
