Mr. Fred McBride:

The Grace case was mentioned. As it is the subject of a commission of inquiry, I will not say too much about it other than that I spent a long time during the past year of so on many occasions trying to get clarification about the specific identification of the staff mentioned in that report in order to discover whether they were still working for us and whether we needed to do anything about it. It was only relatively recently that we managed to get the identification of these people and we have implemented appropriate and proportionate human resources processes. I will not say any more than that given that the inquiry is ongoing.

The answer to the question about clinical supervision is "Yes", we have a supervision policy. We would expect front-line practitioners and the different levels in the system to receive supervision on a regular basis in terms of looking at the practice and helping them to reflect. The science of a safety model is fundamentally based on clinical supervision, not only on a one-to-one with the supervisor but also in groups. There is a policy in place around that and my answer to that question is "Yes".

Senator Devine mentioned well-being in terms of the community and having local hubs. My colleague can say something about that but we are currently trying to develop our own therapeutic services. Again, we are still largely reliant on the HSE for services such as psychology services, which are still fairly thin on the ground. We are trying to develop our own therapeutic teams on a local basis in terms of looking at the children who have been sexually abused, children who are potentially exhibiting sexually dangerous behaviour as well as other youngsters who require therapeutic support, not only psychology services or psychiatry services, but other forms of therapeutic input to help them to recover from abuse and neglect. That is a work in progress and I welcome the support around that.

In regard to the Acting Chairman's question about Five Rivers Fostering and its refusal on occasion to take in a young person, our carers can refuse to take a young person as well. A foster carer cannot be obliged to take a difficult youngster who is completely out of control on alcohol or substances. If there are other children, especially younger ones, in that foster placement, it would not be appropriate for a youngster in that condition to go into that foster home.