Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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Is there any independent review or appeal process in place within Tusla if somebody is not happy with the outcome of a case? Take the example of a birth mother who has restricted supervised access to her child for maybe one hour a week. I will group the questions together if that is okay. Is there any independent process in place at the moment which would allow such a case to be reviewed or appealed? If not, is that something Tusla would be open to looking at?

I already referred to increased access. From my experience, there is a lack of reunification plans in place. When one questions that, the response is that it is way down the road. Could Tusla give us the its policy or criteria on reunification and explain how that works? I acknowledge that there are situations where reunification is not possible. We have to be realistic about that. However, where it is possible, it should be at the heart of a care plan.

Given that Mr. Gloster is new to the role, what are his opinions or plans regarding prevention and intervention? Is he looking at family support or other things which might prevent children going into full-time care?

Is there a policy or criteria in place for infants being taken into care? Is it purely based on the mother having other children in care, for example, or is there some set of criteria? I appreciate that the witnesses might not have that information right now, but I ask them to forward it on to the committee.

I wanted to ask about the school completion programme in general. Many of those programmes currently fall under education and training boards and are governed by them. Those ones actually run quite well. A proposal on this was sent to Tusla. Has Tusla looked at that or would it consider it? Issues of governance always arise with the school completion programme and this is one way around that. I was glad to hear Deputy Sherlock mention the school completion programme because it is a fantastic programme which is out on its own. It is invaluable and we should be putting much more resources into it.

On the other set of questions-----