Mr. Wayne Dignam:

I will respond to Senator Ruane's question on our recommendation of a cross-departmental task force to link in with what Professor Kathleen Lynch stated about the intersectionality of disadvantage, with which I certainly agree. Children in care, in themselves, are a particular sector because the State has direct responsibility for these children. The State is their legal guardian.

The State, through the Child and Family Agency, does not know the educational outcomes of children in care. There is no cross-departmental strategy for those children. We come across it daily with foster parents, social workers and teachers. Schools do not know what to do about a child in care. What do they do about consent forms for school trips? What do they do about a child who is misbehaving very badly because of post-traumatic stress disorder? What can they do? What type of support can they get? How can they deal with that? Similar to what the previous speaker mentioned, there are programmes that can be specific for children in care but could be broadened out for homeless children or immigrant children as well.

If there is a cross-departmental task force, it also needs to look specifically at children in care because we have been forgotten in a lot of strategies. As I said in my opening statement, the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education did not mention children of the State. Even though it was a State strategy, it did not mention its own children. From what we know from international research, the outcomes of children in education are bad. Some of the programmes that we can look at can help more vulnerable children who are close to becoming children in State care through many different societal issues. If we can help support teachers at primary level and secondary level, we can help those vulnerable children as well.

We do not have direct contact, to answer Senator Kelleher's question on direct contact, with the Department of Education and Skills on children in care. That is also an issue in terms of the care system and representation of foster parents, care leavers and social workers. It is varied.

That also needs to be joined up so there can be a correlation in terms of feedback going both ways as to what the problems are within the education system for children in care and for care leavers. I would certainly welcome that. In terms of the task force, we recommend that there would be a Department of Education and Skills liaison that could look at the cross-recommendations from the stakeholder group. As I said in my opening statement, we are involved in a national strategy through the centre for disadvantage in DCU and we are getting great ideas from stakeholders, but we need to get that message across to Tusla and to the Department of Education and Skills in terms of what needs to be done to improve outcomes.