Ms Kate Duggan:

As the Deputy said, the foster caring service performs very well internationally in terms of the overall number of children in care and those that are in foster care. Within Tusla at the moment, there are approximately 5,913 children in care in Ireland and 91% of those are in foster care. Some 29% of them were with relative foster carers and 71% were with non-relative foster carers. Approximately 8% are within private foster care. As the Deputy referenced, there has been a small increase in the number of children within private foster care placements. That is linked either to the availability of foster carers within a particular area or within the match that is required in terms of the presentation of the particular child or children within the family. Our priority within Tusla, as the Deputy is aware, is to provide the best placement for a child, relative to what the child needs or requires.

To date in 2020, we have 194 new foster carers approved within Tusla and 28 private applications for foster caring. That is compared to 226 for the whole year in 2019, which was 193 approved within Tusla and 33 private foster carers. I share the view that we need to look at fostering staff having almost an expertise in marketing because we are up against the private agency in terms of its capacity and the type of marketing it uses to attract carers and families within geographical regions.

What I can say is that in this year's Tusla fostering campaign, called Raising Amazing, a significant amount of work went into it from a marketing perspective, particularly in relation to debunking some of the myths that exist about the types of people who we want to become foster carers within communities. A lot of work was done in respect of attracting minority families and letting them know that we want them to apply and to become foster carers. Within that campaign we received a total of 311 enquiries, which was up 67 on last year's total. A huge part of the campaign this year was around social media, and we had social media expertise supporting us on that campaign. We had around 240,000 hits across all of the different social media platforms in Tusla, so we recognise the need to move into a different space in terms of attracting foster carers to Tusla and in debunking the myths so that people across Ireland, from all different types of families or units, understand that we want to hear from them in expressing an interest in becoming foster carers for Tusla.