Ms Kate Duggan:

I thank the Senator for her acknowledgement of all the staff in Tusla. As Mr. Gloster outlined, a significant number of children and families access Tusla welfare services. Those services are delivered by Tusla staff in conjunction with the community and voluntary sector. Mr. Gloster referred to that when he spoke about how we have supported families and children in the context of Covid-19. Simple examples would include how services, staff, and the community and voluntary sectors worked in partnership in each of the 17 local areas to support families during Covid-19, for example by providing advice and guidelines, offering food parcels or helping people to access online education at home. It is very much around supporting families within the area of welfare.

Prevention, partnership and family support, PPFS, is a significant service in Tusla which looks at children and families who do not meet the threshold of being at risk of harm or abuse when there are concerns about supporting them to remain as a unit or access education or helping them to meet any of their wider holistic needs. A significant part of that programme is the Meitheal assessment, which is done with families with inter-agency involvement to assess the particular needs of a child who is presenting with a welfare need, for example, or has a complex disability and is living at home. It is a question of how the services in a child’s life wrap around the child in identifying what they best need to support them and their families at home and prevent them from reaching a threshold for protection services or coming into care. In the first six months of 2020, over 1,075 Meitheal processes were requested, which is an increase on last year. Each of the 17 areas has family support networks that wrap around the child. The needs are very much around welfare in relation to care, being able to access education and early intervention.

Another very significant group in relation to welfare are the children and young people's services committees that are in place in the various areas. Again, this is a multi-agency approach to responding to the needs of particular families and communities. It is very much around Tusla working with the community and voluntary sector to meet those welfare needs.