Ms Catherine Bond:

I shall move on the questions asked by Deputy Jan O'Sullivan around the infrastructure relating to foster care. IFCA looks at the wider infrastructure such as the educational needs and the mental health needs of children in care. Looking at the core needs, every child coming into care is required to have his or her own social worker.

The child's care plan identifies the needs of the child including any additional educational needs such as a special needs assistant, mental health needs, speech and language therapy or occupational therapy. When the State takes a child into care, it becomes the corporate parent of the child. All parents work to ensure that one's child's needs are met. That should be the standard for every child coming into care. We would consider the wider infrastructure in that regard.

In terms of dissemination of information, we strongly feel that while policy development is critical and necessary, it does not stop there and there is a process to it. Everybody who is using a policy needs to know what it is about, what it means, how it is understood and implemented and whether there is a clear and consistent application of the policy across different areas. There needs to be a parallel process of training of everybody who is going to be using policies along with an evaluation of the policies' impact and whether there is an equal application of policies across the board.

The current practice in regard to emergencies out-of-hours, as noted in Mr. Shannon's report, is that section 12 gives the Garda power to respond to crisis situations after hours. Tusla has an out-of-hours policy and out-of-hours support is also provided by the Five Rivers private fostering agency. In a crisis situation, the Garda and the out-of-hours services have responsibility. Tusla has acknowledged that this is an area it is working on. The aspiration is to have out-of-hours support across the board. If a child in foster care absconds, significantly self-harms or has suicidal ideation, there needs to be a common sense approach to consider what is needed for the child. If he or she has absconded, it is not practical for a foster carer to go roaming the streets looking for him or her; instead, the Garda should be called. If a child has self-harmed or had suicidal ideation, the most sensible option is to bring the child to the local hospital.