Ms Lauren O'Toole:

I am 21 and I am part of the EPIC youth council. I have been with EPIC for seven years. We would like to thank committee members for inviting us here today and we are pleased to be joined by our colleagues from the Irish Foster Carers Association, IFCA, the Irish Association of Social Workers and Ms Aoife Bairéad. EPIC is a national children's rights organisation that works with and for children in the care system, young people in after-care services and with care-experienced young people up to age of 26. We work with children in foster care, kinship care, and residential care, including high support and special care and those sentenced or remanded by the courts in Oberstown Children’s Detention Campus. We are the only organisation in Ireland providing a direct, independent advocacy service to these children and young people, and their experience and perspectives inform our submission today.

I am joined by the CEO of EPIC, Ms Marissa Ryan, and a member of the EPIC Youth Council, Mr. Rory Brown. Ms Ryan is happy to answer any questions on EPIC’s policy on fostering and Mr. Brown and I will share our views based on our experience of living in foster care.

At the outset, we have several key messages we urge the committee to consider and we are happy to discuss these in more detail throughout this meeting. We particularly hope that these and other issues raised in EPIC’s submission to budget 2023 are acted on. Foster carers who open their home to children who cannot live with their birth families change and save lives. They need to be celebrated and supported by the Government. The State relies on these people to look after the children in its care, but foster care is not invested in and carers do not receive the support they require.

Foster carers are often responsible for supporting a child that has been traumatised, while they also have to look after their birth children. They need to manage the logistics of family life, engage with social workers, birth families and other professionals. Politicians should regularly and vocally support fostering in their constituencies and at a national level. The fostering community must see that they are recognised and valued and that foster parents and foster children are an important part of our society. As we say in EPIC, "It takes a village to raise a child."

Fostering allowances have not been increased since 2009 and there is now a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis and other factors which mean foster care numbers are decreasing rapidly. It is far cheaper for the State to support children in foster families than in residential care. Research has shown that it is better for children to be placed with a family rather than in residential care, which is an institutional setting that lacks stability and a family environment. The Government should use the annual budget to increase the fostering allowance to ensure fosterers can afford to offer homes to children who need them and to ensure that foster children have the opportunities to thrive with their foster families, including by having the means to attend extracurricular activities, to go on holidays or to simply enjoy being a child.

The act of being taken into care is traumatic. Children can lash out, be angry, upset and feel incredibly isolated and vulnerable. This can cause problems with the foster families, including with the birth children of foster parents. Both foster carers and their birth children should be given regular training on trauma informed care, as well as access to counselling, as should the child in care who is living with them. The Government should ensure additional funds are ring-fenced in Tusla for the provision of counselling and therapeutic interventions to children in care and foster families, and that children in care are prioritised by the HSE for timely access to mental health services.

Foster families often do not receive enough support from social workers, fostering link workers or aftercare workers. They can be left responsible for managing everything in the child's life and this can become overwhelming. For example, where a social worker or access supervisor is not available to drive a child to see their birth family, or when a social worker needs those hours for something else, this can fall on the shoulders of the foster parents, and they must deliver all the logistics and manage the emotional issues that can arise during access visits between a child in care and their birth family. This is on top of all the other work that needs to be done in a family home.

Tusla has a shortage of social workers and other professionals whose role it is to support families and children. More investment and political supports are needed to allow Tusla recruit and retain social workers and other professionals who can assist children in care and foster families, and have regular contact with them.

Normalising foster care is very important. Many foster children in EPIC were brought to local events for foster families run by the Irish Foster Care Association, IFCA, to meet other foster children. This helped to fight the stigma and isolation around fostering, and was often a place where young people in foster care could see their siblings who may have been placed in a different foster home in the area. Politicians should work with local authorities, city councils, IFCA and others to run days like this on a regular basis. They should attend them and publicise them too. At the same time the Government should examine other ways to normalise foster families, for example, through inclusion on the census form. I know when I filled out the recent census, in brackets beside the words foster family was the word "unrelated". I have never felt so heartbroken having to fill in a form in my life.

When a child is taken into care the State is acting in loco parentis, in the place of a parent. At the very least a child should only be removed from their home when the State can guarantee that they will be better cared for elsewhere. In Ireland the State has not been acting as a parent should. There are many cracks in the care system that politicians have ignored or are simply unaware of yet. It is this lack of investment and support that has led to the current fostering crisis, with the number of fosterers decreasing every year. This has a huge impact on children in State care and those around them. It is nearly ten years since the founding of Tusla and the development of our current child protection and welfare system. Perhaps it is time for the Government to invest in reviewing the care system, as has happened in England and Scotland in recent years.

Children in care can often be marginalised and their voices are seldom heard. In addition, they may lack regular access to a social worker or another professional. Independent advocacy, which helps a child to have their voice heard, is extremely important. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all the children have the right to be heard and to participate in decision-making about their lives. At present, EPIC is the only organisation providing a direct advocacy service to care-experienced children and young people. We believe that independent advocacy for children in care should be enshrined in legislation. Organisations like EPIC should be fully funded to meet the needs of all care-experienced children, and young people who may require an advocate to help them have their views heard and acted on.