Ms Jacinta Swann:

I am principal social worker and manager of the Clarecare family support service. I thank the committee for inviting me. I am accompanied by Ms. Iris Mockler, one of Clarecare’s advocacy workers, who works directly with parents of children in care. My opening statement is based on consultations with parents of children in care over many years. Examples of what the parents have told us will be shared as a way of bringing them into the room with us. I will outline the work we do with parents for the wellbeing of children and the importance of their contribution in the care process.

Our Tusla-funded advocacy service for parents and our aftercare service for young people leaving care form part of Clarecare’s suite of family support services. I have managed both services since their inception 20 years ago. Over that time in the advocacy service, we have worked with over 200 parents, some of whom have been with us for over ten years. The advocacy service evolved from parents asking who is there for them at the point their child is being placed in care. Parents explained that at their greatest vulnerability, when they are often in shock, grieving and overwhelmed, social work support is reduced for them, as the focus moves on to the child in care, foster carers and review systems. This shift compounds the distress and isolation felt by parents, who often have little or no support to navigate the system. Parents describe the experience of having a child taken into care as similar to the death of a child, returning home to an empty house, often alone, and sitting in an overwhelming silence surrounded by their child’s things. As one parent described it, "it can feel like your soul is sucked out of your body". Parents speak about holding feelings of shame, failure and guilt. Some express relief when their child is cared for and achieving well when they know they are unable to provide this.

The Clarecare advocacy service has two part-time advocates. It is a support service for parents of children in the care of Tusla in the Clare area. Three key responsibilities of the advocate worker are assisting parents to prepare for meetings, attending child-in-care reviews with the parent and having three-way meetings with social workers. An overall role of the advocate worker is to support positive communication between the parent, social workers and foster carers with a view to ultimately supporting the child’s wellbeing. We also run a support group to help reduce parent’s isolation, as well as parent participation initiatives. Parents have an input in our service design, delivery and materials. One development during Covid was in response to parents asking what to say after "Hello" on a WhatsApp call to their children. From this we developed a resource booklet around using technology to create positive connections, which supported all parts of the care system.

Neglect is the primary reason for children being taken into care. This is often unintentional neglect, a by-product of a variety of interconnected social and personal issues. Parents are mostly mothers, often parenting alone and living in financial poverty. Parents often experience obstacles to understanding and engaging in care planning processes. Working with parents can be difficult and slow. The chaos and distress in a parent’s life still exist after his or her child is placed in care. Parents suffer emotional reactions and contradictory feelings arising from the experience and trauma of the loss of their child. This loss can express itself in anger and denial. Parents sometimes describe how hard it is to face the pain they have caused their children and feelings of powerlessness from the lack of information and participation in the process. This can lead to frustration, anger and sometimes aggressive and intimidating behaviour. This can also lead to non-attendance at meetings or family visits.

Foster carers and social workers can find these responses difficult to work with and communication can be difficult between all who care for the child. If communication has broken down between social work services and the parents, however, it is almost impossible for the parent to contribute. As services providing supports to the children, we need to consider the impact on a child when his or her parents' potential positive contribution is missing and how this may affect the child’s sense of him or herself and of belonging as he or she tries to make sense of his or her world.

While acknowledging the personal and systemic barriers for parents to engage with social work services, we also acknowledge the challenges when they do. Over all the years of direct work with parents, I am often in awe of their resilience in the face of adversity. Many parents attend meetings and family visits time and time again, regardless of how hard it is. They often describe it as like publicly losing their child all over again as they brave rooms full of people talking about their child who they no longer live with. Parents face this for their children, whom they are unable to care for, in order to attempt to repair the trust that has been broken. Such bravery and care are precious gifts to their children. For parents, foster carers and children, visits can be difficult and full of complex emotions for all involved as it is not a normal situation. Much time and energy is spent on physically organising the time, place and transport to the visit, and little focus is put on how parents and children can interact in calmer, more positive ways that acknowledge the stress involved, rather than expecting everyone to perform as if it is normal. Parents, foster carers and children need support to create and maintain meaningful family visits.

I have worked with parents and seen young people in aftercare moving through and navigating the care system. I have had the privilege of seeing what happens in the long term. I have witnessed the positive outcomes for young people when parents and foster carers are supported to work together and where the parent is accepted as part of the child’s journey. Parents have a unique contribution to make and, without this, there is a piece missing in the jigsaw of the child’s life. Our work in aftercare reinforces the value of this approach as we see young people navigate questions about their history. Even young people who have ambivalent feelings about their parents are still often concerned about their wellbeing and feel connected to them, even if contact is limited. In later teenage years they often seek to understand why they came into care and some seek to return to their parents to see if it could work. Parents and children in care have life-long, ever-evolving relationships with one another that surpass their time in the care system. Decisions made about family visits have potential long-term implications for children’s relationships with their parents, siblings and extended family.

After decades advocating for services for parents of children in care, Clarecare welcomes the support of Tusla and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, for the development of a national advocacy service. It was empowering for the parents of our service to contribute to the research that informed the model. Parents can contribute to these national developments on alternative care when it is done in a respectful, creative way and their views and experiences are valued. There is a duty on services to acknowledge and support any meaningful contribution parents can make in the lives of their children. Through the hard work of dedicated Tusla social workers, foster carers, advocates and parents, we have witnessed this happening and making a difference to children’s lives. When we started the advocacy service 20 years ago, parents sought to find a way to express how they were feeling and summed it up by saying “You’re in my heart while we’re apart”. We all owe it to children in care to find ways to let them know this.