Ms Marissa Ryan:

We absolutely agree that adversarial court proceedings are rarely in the best interests of the child and certainly not in the best interest of the parent. One of the points that came through in all our presentations is that the parents are going through trauma. They are grieving. They may have been the victim of extreme circumstances in the past or are so at present. It is incredibly bewildering, disenfranchising and disempowering to lose one's child and be confronted with a whole host of professionals asking questions in a situation in which one does not necessarily understand the process. As I said, people are already traumatised and grieving at that point.

While we are very happy that we finally will have a support process, we would also like to see that level of support for parents going in at a much earlier stage. Instead of waiting until a child is being taken into care and he or she is under an interim care order or similar, parents should have support earlier on and be equipped with the types of resources to which Ms Greene referred. We hope the pilot project will provide for signposting to parents of how they can get help and be assisted and get information on the processes they will go through and what is happening to their child. That will allow parents to feel much more part of the process and less disenfranchised from it. Ms Kneafsey might give an example of this from our advocacy casework.