Fostering services in Cork are ‘in crisis’, social workers say

Fostering services in Cork are “in crisis”, Tusla social workers have warned, with a severe lack of foster carers seeing at-risk children being left in unsafe homes, in hospitals and Garda stations .

In a damning report the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found “significant gaps” in services for children in care in Cork.

Over 20 per cent of children in care in the region had not been contacted or seen by the social worker as required; almost 250 children’s cases were overdue a review. There were repeated instances where no foster care placement available for children in crisis, and, many fostering placements were over crowded.

The announced inspection of Tusla’s Cork fostering services took place over four days between September 28th and October 1st 2020, and included interviews with children in care and social workers.

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“Inspectors identified serious and growing concerns about the capacity and sustainability of fostering arrangements in the Cork service area and the impact this was having on children who needed to be brought into care over the last couple of years,” says the report published on Tuesday.

“Records sampled by inspectors indicated a poor experience for some children who had been taken into care in an emergency or whose foster care placement had broken down.

“Inspectors found that the service area’s capacity to match children to foster carers best placed to meet their individual needs was severely compromised. Social workers told inspectors the service was ‘in crisis’.”

At the time of the inspection Tusla had 715 children in Cork in foster care, of whom 660 were on full care orders, 16 on interim care orders and 39 were in voluntary care.

Of the six national standards assessed just one was compliant, two standards were substantially compliant and three were found to be “major non-compliant”.

“At the time of the inspection 156 children had not been contacted or visited by their social worker in line with the regulations (almost 22 per cent of children placed in foster care).” Hiqa found “comparatively high numbers of children (reported as 66 by the service area) did not have an up to date care plan”

A “severe” lack of foster carers was highlighted.

“Review of records and discussions with social workers indicated some worrying trends over the past couple of years. In one case, the court hearing had to be adjourned for a month with the child remaining at home on a supervision order until a placement was found.

“Another child had to remain in hospital for an additional week as a ‘social admission’ as a foster care placement was not available. Concerns were also raised about another child spending six hours in a Garda station as there was no placement for them.”

One social work department had recorded 15 instances where there was no foster care placement when needed in 2019.

Children were also being placed in different foster homes to their siblings as there was no home to take them together and Hiqa found “ insufficient oversight of the impact for children in these situations”.

Following the inspection, Hiqa escalated concerns about systemic weaknesses in review processes, particularly a backlog of reviews with 248 overdue and inconsistencies in review practice. “One social work department had a lengthy overdue waiting list for child-in-care reviews dating back to 2016.”

There were “widespread failures” in complying with required timeframes for reviews with “critical gaps” including late or no review of children following emergency placements, unplanned endings to placements or placements with new foster carers.

Inspectors spoke to 12 children in foster care in Cork and received 242 questionnaires from children aged 5-16 years of age and 43 from children aged over 16 years.

Children living with relative carers spoke highly of the care, making comments including: “I like everything. It’s a perfect family. I fit right in like a puzzle piece into a puzzle.”

In some cases, however, children’s responses were qualified. “My social worker didn’t listen to me. She never came to see me for months when I was asking when I was so sad.”

Responding to the report Tusla's national director of services and integration, Kate Duggan, said: "Foster care recruitment continues to be a challenge for Tusla nationally, and we recently rolled out our second national public awareness and recruitment campaign to encourage people to consider fostering a child.

“Overall we are continuing to build on much of the good work in our services in Cork. We remain committed to continuously improving our services to ensure child protection practice across all areas is safe and effective.”

She said Tusla in Cork was developing an independent child-in-care review team which would “ensure consistency in the planning and delivery of child-in-care reviews; recruiting additional social workers; updating IT to automatically flag cases where follow up is required, and, implementing a new statutory visiting guidance policy and holding new foster recruitment campaigns.