Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will get one more point in first. The other thing I wanted to ask about is the trauma-related piece. Sometimes the trauma is not obvious when kids go into foster care at six, seven or eight years of age. They reach the age of 12 or 13 and start to think and see the unfairness and injustice, and then the trauma emerges. There are foster parents with whom I have been working for years. Sometimes a child in their care will visit his or her parent and the foster parent will say the child is upset every time he or she comes home and then, bang, the access is closed down. Of course the child is upset.

This is part of it. That is their birth parent. Trauma is complex. Rather than offering training to foster parents when kids are already in their care, how can we ensure foster parents' intentions and principles are in line with providing good care to kids who carry complex trauma? We should not wait until the kids are in the foster parents' care for them to discover they may need the training when the care has already broken down. We have so many foster kids who will not develop in the way the birth kids of the foster parents will because they are afraid to breathe wrong in case they lose their placement. Therefore, they cannot be cheeky or push the boundaries and come in at 12 midnight instead of at 10 o'clock at night when they were asked to. They cannot do those things in many cases out of fear. That must also impact on their developmental stages through teenage years. Obviously, there are amazing things about foster parents. We need foster care. I am glad that about 90% are in foster care. That is what I want to support. However, too many standards are being let down in many cases with which I deal. How do we begin to address that?