The Sir John Reid Community Service Award honours the contribution to the Club of Sir John Reid, a Past President, Paul Harris Fellow, recipient of the Vocational Service Award and member of the Club from 1936 to 1984, and recognises a person in the Victorian community whose voluntary service is judged to be worthy of special notice.

In 2009/2010, this presentation is made to Mrs Janine Slinger for her work with foster children over nearly 20 years under the auspices of Anglicare Victoria.

She and her family have had more than fifty children come into their home in that time, mostly short term, but six of those children stayed longer than a year, and two of them joined the family permanently, as they were not able to return to their own birth families.

Over the past decade she has become more involved in other aspects of fostering, in addition to the actual caring.  She and her family have been committed members of the ‘Kids in Care’ caregiver pool.  She has been involved in the training process itself, attending professional training workshops and working alongside prospective and new foster carers as a mentor while they develop their skills.  In this capacity Janine is also involved in the accreditation of new carers.

She attends professional forums as a foster carer representative, and has been involved with the Therapeutic Fostercare Reference group for the Outer East, and the Best Practice Engagement Project instigated by the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare Inc., which supports community service organisations in Victoria.  The aim is to increase recruitment and retention of Victorian foster carers.  Although hers is purely a volunteer position, Mrs Slinger considers fostering to be both a career and a calling.

The Rotary Club of Melbourne considers Mrs Janine Slinger to be a most worthy recipient of the Sir John Reid Community Service Award for 2010.