Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I am sure Deputy Costello will forgive me as I try to work my way through to find the questions. Many of his observations were suggestive of solutions and I do not disagree with the thrust of those observations. There are two or three points that I think are critical. First, I agree and have supported the view since I came to the agency that having 20% of our approved carers as relatives something we should continue to build on. It is difficult because it depends on the individual family and child circumstances but there is no slack on our side on that. We have focused on the link worker prioritised to relatives, particularly relatives who are unapproved in the early phase of a placement, to ensure the additional safeguarding and support systems are there.

I will let Ms Duggan address therapeutics but it is not only the time factor of the distance of out-of-area placements that is a concern. We are increasingly seeing concern in relation to foster care and private residential care that a child on a care placement, albeit important for their safety and well-being, is increasingly distanced from their network and community. That is a particular challenge on the private residential side and, for foster care, in the greater Dublin area.

We will have to make many improvements for foster carers in a short time. I have spoken with the Minister about that and he is committed to it. He is waiting for the final piece from us in terms of the plan. We had to try to deal with the residential first. I do not think anybody would dispute that. From the feedback we have got from foster carers, one of our biggest challenges is consistency in supporting Tulsa foster carers. No matter how good the rule set is, the interpretation of supporting them in Donegal will be different to Dingle but we are seeing increased consistency. This year, for the first time, we have made a decision about in-house therapeutics that I think the Deputy will find encouraging. It is not enough yet because we have to do it in step. I will ask Ms Duggan to talk about that.

I agree with the Deputy on the percentage of foster carers being the limit to which we should go because the dependency is small. I take on board his general concern. Family life and patterns have changed, as have many other things. I have no difficulty saying we have an out-of-hours social work team and even for very small children who might be considered easy to care for in an emergency, we increasingly find that, for Dublin emergency admissions, we have to go further and further. That concerns me and we will have to find a way to address that. As I said earlier, that probably rests in our ability to support foster carers in practical ways.