Dr. Valerie O'Brien:

I want to make two points that address some of the questions from both Senator Ruane and Deputy Cairns. Ms Bond talked about the care team around the child. That team needs to be careful the child is not overly pathologised. I absolutely concur with the need for trauma-informed practice but such practice must look not only at the individual but also at the network of relationships from which the child comes. It also must look at the network of relationships within the professional setting. All too often, as we know, the professional network begins to mirror the difficulties out of which the child has come. I train and work with professionals and I recognise we are not always to the fore in looking at what we are bringing into those networks, what pushes our buttons and our responsibility around our own reflexivity. Members of the care team need the space in which to look at their own needs. We know what happens if we do not care for the carers.

Regarding recruitment and retention of foster carers, Carol Coulter has done fantastic work in her court reporting. Her reportage has been telling us for more than 15 years that there is an overrepresentation of children from diverse backgrounds in the care system. Internationally, we know there is an overrepresentation of minority populations within care systems and there is also an underrepresentation of those populations as foster carers. We in Ireland are making all the same mistakes and we should not be doing so. There are many potential foster carers in diverse communities, if they are spoken to, encouraged and supported. The best way to recruit foster carers, as Ms Bond may talk more about, is through word of mouth. We also need exit interviews for every foster carer who leaves Tusla to move to private provision and every foster carer who leaves fostering. Many of them leave because there is a life cycle to fostering. People do it for a certain number of years, a bit like rearing children. We need to gather those data and not necessarily from the organisation with which the foster carer is really annoyed. We could be in a very good position if many of the services could begin to collate those data.