Mr. Damien Peelo:

I will add the simple thing that having access to a medical card that would allow her to access services, and not having to necessarily get those privately, is a huge part of it. Children in formal care get access to that but children in kinship care do not. Those children are in care. They are in the care of a family that loves and supports them, but they are still in care. That is not recognised.

I come back to two other points in relation to Tusla. Some of these issues are very systemic. I am talking to people in this room who know that poverty, social exclusion and racism are at the heart of a lot of the societal issues we are talking about. Tusla's prevention, partnership and family support programmes are so much less invested in than child welfare supports, but both need equal investment. Both need to be invested in, if we are talking about the preventative measures as much as responding to the crisis that is there. Everybody here has talked about early intervention and supports but prevention is as important.

In some of my work in the background, I am still involved, with Fiona and others, in Traveller projects and work. Travellers are hugely important in kinship care. They did it long before it was recognised, as was the support of the community for a family raising children. There are specific needs, when we are talking about those voices that are excluded from all the supports and services, around culturally appropriate supports. Tusla are before another committee today - I met its representatives in the hallway - regarding the Traveller project, but they need to be in here. There needs to be so much crossover. The intersectionality of all of those things is really important. We cannot take away from the investment in the preventative work. It does not always need to be a social work response. There is so much more in supports out there. We need to move away from the medicalisation of all this into a much more of a communities response.