Dr. Valerie O'Brien:

Yes, residential and sometimes very small group homes. The children in care are in one of two places: in foster care or in residential homes. Residential homes are staffed by multiple different carers coming and going. For some children that may be okay, but it is not an ideal place for children as a long-term alternative. It does, however, meet the needs of some children, particularly teenagers.

There is one point we have not stressed enough today. About 30% of all children in foster care are in fact with what we call relative or kinship foster families. That is another one of the great departures that has happened since the late 1990s. We are all family members. We all know from our own histories that things can go right for individual family members. It is one of the great chips in our child welfare system. Relative foster carers or kinship foster carers - in Ireland we call them the former - are both family member and foster carer at the same time and they have different support needs and service needs. In many ways, it is only now we are talking about them here. Even in the IASW we did not highlight that.

Third, the issue of adoption is a very interesting question. What would be the target group? The important thing about adoption is that it is extraordinarily complex, and we know what the legacy of adoption has been in this country. Therefore, while we are looking at adoption for children in care, we have to be careful to look at the individual child's needs and the intergenerational consequences of a child being adopted. The law is very clear that there has to be a proportionate response to the child. We have very little case law at present because the children currently being adopted are those being adopted by their foster carers and those who are ageing out of care. That is why the focus here has been on care planning and what is happening in that regard. If these children appear before the courts with a proposed adoption plan and if the birth parents contest that, it is in the case law that we will see what happens.

The other major limitation of adoption is that the adoption law did not incorporate a provision whereby children, even if adopted, would have a right to ongoing contact with their birth families. That has happened since 1975 in many jurisdictions.