There are “significant gaps” in the provision of foster care placements for children with complex needs in Cork, the health and safety watchdog has said.
In February, the Health and Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) completed a risk-based assessment of the child protection and welfare and foster care services provided by the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) in the Cork service area.
In its inspection report, published on Wednesday, it said there had been improvements in the area since previous inspections in 2020 and 2021, particularly in governance, but added that of the 12 standards assessed in the area, only two were found to be substantially compliant.
Some social workers in Cork have “unmanageable caseloads” resulting in some children in need having to wait months before intervention, inspectors said, adding that “significant gaps” in foster care placements remained for children with complex needs.
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“In particular, the availability of a suitable range of care placements for a small, highly vulnerable, group of children was inadequate,” the report said.
According to the most recent figures from Tusla, from March, Cork has the highest number of children in their care in the country, at 733.
Hiqa said there remained areas of social work practice where the pace, level or impact of change had been “relatively slow”.
“Social workers for children in care reported ongoing challenges in managing their caseloads to ensure statutory regulations were consistently met,” the report said.
“While decisions about the de-allocation of children in care were informed by management analysis of risk, including the stability of their placement, children in these circumstances experienced different social workers
It added: “This often occurred on an issue or short-term basis, which inevitably detracted from the provision of a child-centred service.”
According to Hiqa, the four social work departments were at different stages in delivering improvements.
One departments said 10 of its practitioners had “unmanageable caseloads” as a result of “significant challenges” in recruiting staff, while two other departments continued to lack capacity to allocate new referrals “in a timely manner”.
“These teams had a high number of cases which were designated as ‘awaiting allocation’; with some children waiting many months before any direct work was done with them and their families,” the report said.
The inspectors said further improvement was required to “ensure a consistently high standard of supervision and performance development of staff at all levels”.
The watchdog called for additional time and resources to be appointed to the area in order to address ongoing waiting lists and delays in responding to local need.
“This would help to achieve a consistently high standard of practice, organisational stability and sustainability,” it added.
