Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach, I have a few all right. I have lots. I want to pick up on something related to Senator Seery Kearney's contributions teasing out the social worker piece and what happens when there is an unallocated child, especially if that unallocation happens while her or she is in care. It is hard for me to comprehend the idea of the highest need, when the fact is the person is in contact with Tusla because he or she is already of the highest need when it comes to children. Then we begin to categorise further within what is already hardship. I would not like to be in the position of having to look at it in that way, but I understand there must be frameworks put around how to provide something when resources are low. I then became concerned with the unallocated person, because we already know how difficult it is for parents to utilise the fact they do not even have a social worker, but that the social worker the children have is supposed to act as a liaison or some sort of support, so now it is not only the child who is unallocated but the family who is completely unallocated. Any extra supports that are given are going to focus on the child, so it feels like the parent is then even further out to sea because he or she is not being seen as the one who is unallocated, rather the child is. It is just something that came to my mind about what happens to the parent in that regard and the supports for them.

On retention, we can look at the institutes of technology, ITs, and all those different routes, but I am more thinking about my experience of coming through community education and the fact lots of community education colleges have partnerships with universities. An Cosán has youth and community development with Maynooth University. There are relationships with community colleges and Carlow in relation to the development of IT. I am wondering whether the Department is looking at ways to provide social work degrees at a community level, where it is much more accessible for people who may not see university as a route for them. Also on the area of recruitment and retention, a couple of years ago the idea was mooted of giving a higher rate of pay to social workers in urban areas because of the cost of living. Has the Department ever considered such proposals in order to have retention in those more condensed spaces?

On supervision, I am wondering whether the agency officials can clarify what they see supervision as. Is the supervision concerned with the caseload or with the impact the work has on them? That obviously ties into the retention piece. I am also wondering about the private providers. Are they encountering the same difficulties with recruitment and retention or staffing and resourcing? If not, why not? When there is not a properly-regulated placement available to a child or young person, what exactly happens? What happens to that child and who is responsible? Is there a child left leaving court on a given day with nowhere to go? In the worst-case scenario of a bed and breakfast or hotel, what exactly happens in that situation? What about the agency's long-term strategy to reduce the reliance on the private sector? New foster carers were spoken about earlier as well. In many reports it says they were mainly recruited over the years through word of mouth, but recently the Foster Care Association indicated 76% of foster carers would not recommend foster caring to other families, which is obviously a real concern. What are the witnesses' thoughts on that in general? I am skipping over questions I feel have been answered. On the Barnahus model, can the Department comment on whether there is an expansion on the way for that to extend to other parts of the country with funding and resourcing?

Also on the Department, to what extent has it contributed to the establishment of the child poverty office within the Department of the Taoiseach? We have spoken about cross-agency and multidisciplinary work, so I am wondering what role the Minister's Department has played in that work to date, if any.

The final question is what does the agency do for children who have a parent in prison. It is something I read about in the statement that came in from Judge Simms. I have worked for a long time with men in prison, but also in a personal capacity I have an awareness and a concern that when a parent is in prison there is no obligation to ensure that parent has regular visitation unless the foster parent or the parent who has care decides he or she wants to do that.

There is no obligation and the second parent can become isolated. I wonder if the witnesses have any comments on this aspect.