Foster care plans 'by end of year'

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has said outstanding care plans for foster children in two Dublin areas will be completed by the end of the year.

The executive also said 10 social workers will be recruited in the region within the next three months, with an additional 10 also allocated to help deal with the backlog.

The move comes after an audit of more than 1,000 foster-care files by the Health Information Quality Authority (Hiqa) in the Dublin north-west and Dublin north central areas found well over 200 had placements with unapproved foster parents for significant periods or were without care plans.

A care plan is where a social worker works with the family, the child and the various other stakeholders to list out a series of actions for the child.

The Hiqa report, seen by The Irish Times, also found some children in State care have not had a visit from a social worker for up to 10 years or more.

This morning Stephen Mulvaney, HSE regional director of operations for HSE Dublin North East, said the report identified a “large number of very serious failings” since last September in two Dublin areas.

He said the HSE had “significantly fallen down” on the requirement to assess relative foster carers within a period after initial placement of the child but it had been working with Hiqa since October to address some of the findings.

“At this stage we are at 82 per cent of outstanding care plans have been completed . . . we’ll get to 90 per cent by the middle of July and we’ll have all of them completed by the year end.

"That's a significant advance on where we were," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.

Mr Mulvaney estimated there is currently a shortage of approximately 17 to 18 social workers in the areas but said posts will come on stream in the next two three months.

Other findings in the Hiqa report included

record-keeping so poor that inspectors have had difficulties establishing an accurate number for children in foster care, and many files were either incomplete, incorrectly recorded or missing.

In some cases, items belonging to children (such as photographs, letters and a baby bracelet) had fallen out of files with no identification to attach to the file or child; Children as young as five were placed in supported lodgings, a more independent form of care designed for people in their mid to late teens.