Casey Stevens was just 12 when she came to live with her foster carer, Melissa Myles.
"She's my daughter as far as I'm concerned. We're really close, we have a great relationship," Ms Myles said.
But despite wanting to formally adopt Casey, who is now 18, she was unable to because state government payments to foster carers cease on adoption.
As a single mother, albeit with a good job, Ms Myles said she needed the financial support to continue to properly look after Casey.
"For me personally, the money is the last thing I think of on a day-to-day basis," said Ms Myles, who says she took on the role because she had "something to give".
"Foster caring is about a lot more than the money, but it does have to be a consideration in this day and age."
On Wednesday, Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward committed $24 million over four years for means-tested payments to carers who adopt their foster children.
Parents adopting children under four would receive an allowance of $488 a fortnight, up to $738 for teenagers; and more for high-needs children.
But critics have pointed out that adoptions are a tiny part of the state's massive child protection problem, with just 68 adoptions last year and more than 18,000 kids in out-of-home care.
The plan, spruiked by government as "the most significant reforms to child protection and out-of-home care in almost a decade", comes in the wake of a damning upper house inquiry into child protection in NSW which found that FACS is failing the state's most vulnerable children.
The change was welcomed by advocacy group Adopt Change, founded by actress Deborra-Lee Furness, which said adoptions are at a record low while the number of children in out-of-home care is at a record high.
Ms Goward said while the number of NSW adoptions was low - 77 so far this financial year - she believed there would be "hundreds" after these changes.
She emphasised that they would be "open adoptions", where children have the option to maintain contact with their birth parents, despite legally severing ties with them.
"We want that number to be hundreds of adoptions and that means now we have removed the financial disincentive ... we need to clear the red tape in the department," she said.
A second plank of the plan is $90 million over four years for agencies to deliver interventionist programs to work with families where there has been abuse and neglect.
Ms Goward said similar programs run in New York had reduced the number of children in foster care by half over a 10-year period.
The $90 million program would help just 900 children per year, with half of those places dedicated to Aboriginal children.
The Greens upper house MP David Shoebridge, who sat on the child protection committee, welcomed the additional funding for early intervention "but it is not anywhere near the scale needed to turn the dysfunctional child protection system around".
"Even if adoptions doubled they will still be less than 2 per cent of the children in need of care and protection," he said.
"We need to get the system right for the other 98 per cent of children where the focus must be not on permanent estrangement with their families but keeping families safe and together."
Dr Catherine Lynch from the Australian Adoptee Rights Action Group was scathing about the plans.
"As usual, these changes are a further attempt by government to avoid responsibility for children in state care," she said. "Most children in state care will never be adopted.
"Why is all this money being poured into these few babies whisked off into private homes, while the rest of these children are left languishing in the foster care systems that we're seeing are not being properly run?"
Labor's Tania Mihailuk said: "There is so much red tape and barriers preventing and delaying adoption that rather than overhauling current adoption procedures, the government has announced financial incentives that it knows very few families will be in a position to access."
Ms Stevens said she wanted to be adopted by Ms Myles for years.
"It's very hard [for foster kids]," she said. "They don't have a permanent place. I know some kids that I've spoken to in foster care that have moved house probably five times.
"So now that the government is putting this together - they'll know that when you're in foster care for so long, you'll be able to be adopted."
