Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. That is much appreciated. The lads who featured on the podcast that won the award would not be strangers to many of the issues we are discussing today. They are men who have engaged with the justice system and spent time in and out of prison but who have also experienced many of the things we are discussing today. This session sits somewhat uncomfortably with me because I believe a big part of this conversation is missing. There is rarely any real representation, here or anywhere else, of birth families. It came up briefly in one of the witnesses' contributions in the context of birth families not having their own social worker.

I am not speaking about situations where there are child protection issues and it is necessary to remove a child due to sexual abuse, physical violence or that type of stuff. Unfortunately, we are exposed to violence in many communities in different ways. It is a collective thing, however. Some families will come on the radar more than others in terms of the support they may need. That may be because it is a woman who needs support with addiction or a father coming out of prison and seeking access to his child who is now in care as a result of issues relating to the child's mother. There are many different issues. The foster allowance is a particular amount of money and there has been discussion on increasing it. Foster parents expect to receive a certain level of support and service. Many of the families whom I support expected to receive such supports, as birth families, for their children who had additional needs or when they needed support in terms of being able to access treatment for addiction or to deal with poverty or the housing crisis. There are women ending up in hotels. There are so many different societal failures that have led to so many children ending up in care as a result of poverty rather than it being due to outright neglect in terms of being able to have access. We need to be able to have a conversation not only as representatives discussing solutions in terms of the aftermath of social care but also about how we can support people with services while they are in the care of their family members.

I refer to the parental capacity assessments that are carried out and the scrutiny on some very willing, active and loving parents who are able to provide care but are held to a standard to which foster parents are not even remotely held. That is an unusual bar to set for birth parents who want to care for their children, who have done the parenting course and X, Y and Z, who have never hit or abused their child but who, possibly due to having gone into prison or due to an absence or an addiction, are being held to a standard that not even I could meet. How do we begin to address some of those issues? In some of these cases family reunification is the best possible thing. Sometimes we are missing that part of the conversation.

In some cases, traumatised children have traumatised parents. The parents were kids at one stage and they were traumatised by the same system that is now traumatising their children, yet they are expected to know how to be something different when they become parents, even though they did not have access themselves in the first place. How do we fix that? They do not have representation for themselves because they consider themselves guilty or bad or believe they cannot advocate. We need to find an advocacy body to work directly with them. I know we prefer to extend comments in a particular direction but I would love to hear the thoughts of the witnesses on that issue.

I always agree with Ms Bairéad but when she said 12 months of no access to a birth parent-----