Ms Aoife Bair?ad:

I would like to comment on some of Deputy Costello's points. The therapeutic support hubs and the national advocacy service for birth parents are both being established. If they are to work well they are going to need people to staff them, which is beyond social work. The social work placement piece is important. Tusla has done a really good job of offering students placements. I believe that every student who wishes to have a placement can have one in Tusla now. There has been a really good response to that and it is something that Tusla has done very well. Other State bodies can do the same thing. They can ask Tusla what it did and try to replicate it. We need those social workers and services across the board if they are going to do this.

It also means that we need to be focusing within Tusla and the HSE disability and mental health services. We need to be offering training programmes within those that allow them to meet the needs, as with the Judiciary. Everyone needs to have that training. We need to have something established that will review what training people need. The colleges have to do it but we also need to be able to do that in-house for all of them. It is changing all the time. "Trauma" is the buzz word at the moment. A few years ago it was "attachment". It will be something else again. We need people who are in those services to be competent to be able to do that. If Tusla is going to offer that within the therapeutic support hub, and Barnardos within the parent advocacy support service, they are only going to work of those people are available and trained well.