Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

One of the things that strikes me when looking at the Estimates is the context and impact indicators and some of the key outputs we are trying to measure. In some areas of the Vote they actually seem to be proper targets and helpful measures, but my concern is that under programme expenditure A, the children and family support programme, a lot of the impact indicators we measure are just totally wrong. For example, one indicator is the percentage of children across all care settings who have a care plan. While it is important that the children have a care plan, it is a number that can be massaged very easily. I have seen cases where a social worker is allocated, does the care plan and then is unallocated, as it were. The box is being ticked but there is not necessarily any meaningful engagement in care planning. A plan is all well and good on paper, but this does not necessarily mean it is being implemented.

On page 14 we see the number of children in care and the number of referrals. We do not seem to have any measurement for their outcomes. There is no link of the outcomes of children in care to the outcomes in the Better Outcomes, Bright Futures policy. We are not looking at things like children in care who are in education, the number of placement moves or the number of social worker changes. These are three key indicators that would speak to stability of placement and much better quality outcomes for young people in the care system. We will not know this. The more placements the child has and the more changes of social workers, the harder it is for the child to have a decent outcome. These are the sorts of indicators we should be measuring, even if it is just tying them in with the Better Outcomes, Bright Futures outcomes an measurements.

I have a slight frustration in that I asked a parliamentary question on the number of children in care placed outside their local health office, LHO of origin.

I was told by Tusla that it does not have metrics on this, which was quite frustrating for a couple of reasons. One is that our colleague, the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, got those numbers for kids in foster care last year. Another is that Tusla has that information. We spent much time, money and effort getting the national childcare information system, NCCIS, right. As someone who used to labour under the old social work information system, which was rubbish, this is an excellent IT system. We took a long time to implement it because we meant to get it right. This database is filled with numbers that can be anonymised and run off as reports and real, detailed research into the flow of children in care, impact indicators and assessments of quality interventions could be done. For me, the markers in this are wrong. What is Tusla is doing with this repository of data? It could be powerful.

I have three more quick questions. Is there a timeline for the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures: the National Policy Framework for Children and Young People, BOBF, replacement? I know it is due to end at the end of 2020. I do not see anything in the legislative programme about work starting on a replacement.

Is the Minister happy in terms of Brexit and his Department?