Young people in foster care

Sir, – Regarding your report on Listen to Our Voices: Hearing Children and Young People Living in the Care of the State (July…

Sir, – Regarding your report on Listen to Our Voices: Hearing Children and Young People Living in the Care of the State (July 28th), a document based on consultations with children in State care, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs found children aged 8-12 in foster care experienced a high level of care.

To quote the report, “The most striking aspect of all of the consultations with young people aged 8-12 (in foster care) was the air of positivity that marked each one”.

The report also stated that “foster families were also a bastion of support for the vast majority of participants”.

The responses of teenage children in foster care were mixed. This is not to ignore the children in foster care who have experienced multiple placements and worse.

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Nor is it to disregard the fact that some foster families are still awaiting full assessments and approvals in respect of children already placed in their care.

The Health Information and Quality Authority, in carrying out assessments into HSE-run foster care services around the country, has consistently found that even where there have been gross failings to allocate social workers to children in care and to assign link workers to support foster carers, the level of care provided by foster carers was of a very good quality.

A major weakness of the childcare sector is lack of reliable quantitative and qualitative data. When data is presented, some store should be placed in the findings. – Yours, etc,

LIAM CULLEN, Irish Foster Care Association, The Village Green, Tallaght, Dublin 24.

Sir, – Removing a foster child from its placement is complicated. Even when the placement is deemed to be a risk to the child, that same child may not want to move, may have a loyalty to its foster carers and may be unwilling to settle in an alternative placement.

The end result might be no placement at all.

What is considered a “suitable” foster placement by social work staff, who tend to operate from middle-class values, may be experienced as alien to the child who has come from a very different culture.

Having spent 35 years working as a social worker with children and families, I would be reluctant to advise anyone to foster due to the level of intrusion experienced by foster carers.

I frequently asked myself how the parenting practices of non-foster carers would measure up if they were subjected to the glare of an outside agency, or if their child could threaten them with a social worker every time it did not get its own way.

Children in foster care, particularly if well settled in the placement, are often reluctant to become involved in research. They don’t want to view themselves as different from their peers. For the same reason, they are reluctant to acknowledge the presence of a social worker in their lives. – Yours, etc,

MARGARET LEE AHANE, Newport, Co Tipperary.