Ms Caroline Jordan:

The context for the Values Lab report is that we have a national working group and, in 2022, the key national organisations joined our national working group to have a collaborative approach to understand the needs of Traveller children, particularly in terms of the community's key messaging to Tusla and key priorities. Those three priorities, which are outlined in the briefing document, are that there is fear, as we know, and mistrust of the services but also that there is a perception that Tusla needs to have Traveller-led cultural awareness training, we need to address racism, we need anti-discriminatory practices and we need ethnic data. The third priority was that they need more early intervention and prevention services and that we need to support the identity of children in the care of Tusla who are Traveller children. At the time, we agreed we needed to have a national work programme but we also felt we needed to hear it, apart from the national organisations, from the communities. We asked our colleagues within Tusla across our regions to come forward to say they were happy to do an undertaking with an independent consultant. Values Lab was successful in applying for that. We did regional consultations in Kerry and the south east. These included Traveller organisations, Tusla staff and members of the Traveller community.

On the basis of that, Tusla made very clear recommendations concerning the barriers that need to be overcome. Those recommendations inform our national programme of work that we will launch in November. The first barrier in respect of how we work together is about developing, promoting and implementing a set of principles to shape and govern the relationship between Tusla and Tusla-funded staff and members of the Traveller community to ensure engagement that is culturally appropriate and anti-racist. They very much felt that the Values Lab consultation could be a starting point, but we also need to create and promote safe and accessible systems and processes that allow Traveller service users and Traveller organisations to bring forward complaints and issues. Next, we need to develop supports and initiatives for Travellers and Traveller organisations to enable their understanding of Tusla and Tusla-funded services and how they should function in order to correct any misinformation and provide updates on developments in these services.

We applied for dormant accounts funding for 2023. That funding allowed us to encourage local initiatives that were collaborative in each Tusla area. These have been ongoing for the past three years and looks at promoting awareness, access and participation in Tusla services.