Mr. Wayne Dignam:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to attend. I speak as a care leaver, that is, someone with direct experience of growing up in foster and residential care. I am the founder of the Care Leavers Network Ireland, representing approximately 15,000 care leavers in Ireland. With the support of ERASMUS+ funding, we are also developing a European network of care leavers network in England, Italy, Croatia and Romania.

Our paper highlighted the many difficulties faced by children in care within the educational system. We propose some measures to improve their outcomes. Children and young people in care have particular educational vulnerabilities. They are more likely to be suspended, to be placed in a special educational setting, to leave school early, to have mental health problems as adolescents and adults, to become unemployed and homeless, and to enter the criminal justice system.

In preparing our submission, we liaised with key stakeholders in the care system, including the Irish Foster Care Association and the Children's Rights Alliance. I am also a member of the children in care and the education system national working group, led by Dr. Paul Downes, director of the Educational Disadvantage Centre in DCU. This group is developing a policy paper on improving outcomes for children in the care system. The group consists of members of the National Parents Council, various universities, homeless and children's charities, and teacher trade unions. I thank this group of dedicated people, who took an interest in the care system. I also thank my colleague, Mr. Shane Griffin, an advocacy manager in the Care Leavers Network Ireland, for his role in developing the submission. Between foster homes and residential units, Shane had 19 placements within the care system, and I am delighted that he has joined me today.

To give some context, there are approximately 6,240 children in State care, of whom the State is the legal guardian. This incorporates foster care, relative care and residential care. Fewer than 10% of placements are in residential care, which are now small units, designed as close as possible to family homes. On top of the disruption and uncertainty that comes with being taken into care, many children have had harmful life experiences beforehand. Children taken into care typically suffer trauma, tragedy and loss. Like Shane and me, they have had to be removed from their family homes by the State because of their family circumstances, for example, mental health issues, neglect, abuse, and drug and alcohol addiction. Children in care and care leavers experience trauma, loss and attachment difficulties. When trying to describe how it feels to be traumatised in this way, I say that it is similar to how Dorothy felt in the film "The Wizard of Oz", in that it is like being removed from a home and an unhealthy situation and put into another unhealthy situation.

The education system is making matters worse for some children in care and fails to understand the challenges facing such children. Within national strategies on educational disadvantage and access, such as the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015-2019, developed by the Department of Education and Skills, there is no specific mention of children in care in spite of their being in the care of the State and being identified internationally as having poorer educational outcomes than the majority of their population peers. We suggest, therefore, that this committee recommend a high-level national working group or task force to address specifically the cross-departmental responsibilities of the State to children in care and to develop a report, within approximately one year, on actions required to improve their educational outcomes. This group would have the support of many stakeholders within the care system.

A report commissioned by the Office of the Ombudsman for Children in 2013 pointed out that policymaking in respect of children in care needed to be based on evidence gathered systematically from the educational experiences of such children. The creation of a category for children in care on the primary and post-primary online databases of the Department of Education and Skills would allow for the tracking and recording of the objective facts surrounding the education of children in care. As the Ombudsman for Children noted in 2013:

The specific deficit highlighted by this current study presents a serious impediment to evidence-informed policy-making and practice and needs to be addressed if effective policies, procedures and practices are to be put in place to mitigate the barriers to and in education that the literature indicates children in care can face.

We recommend a budget allocation to capture the outcomes of children in care within the educational system that can inform a strategy and policy development for the improvement of educational outcomes.

We also recommend that a designated teacher within a primary or secondary school should be a point of contact with the multidisciplinary team associated with the child in care. This teacher should be trained in areas such as the legalities of the care system, attachment, trauma and admissions and enrolment policies, and should have an understanding of the challenges faced by foster parents and children in care.