Ms Aoife Bair?ad:

I referred in my statement to the fact that, if we are having services work together, there has to be a structure in place in order that those services are scaffolded. A social worker having to refer a birth family to housing so they can have their child returned, having the foster family referred to housing, which is only a letter in advocacy, just cannot work. We do not have a system that can be designed for those services to work together around a child. There has to be something in place. There are many services doing their best to try to work together but there is not a system in place to make sure that is done in a systemic way. Children are frequently failed because of that. Whenever the committee is proposing to draft has to have that practicality in it.

Assessments are all well and good and I do a lot of them. However, the assessment has to demand that intervention is provided as well. Whatever it is, it has to be the service that actually helps. It is no good for a family to just have an answer. They often know there is a problem with their child and they probably guessed what the problem is. They need the help to then do something about that and support their child to meet their potential. The intervention has to be there as well as the assessment.