Ms Lauren O'Toole:

So many points were raised that I will not hit all of them. I always say you cannot build a house if you do not have foundations laid out. We cannot try to do all the wonderful and lovely things we want to do with the foster care system and care system in general unless we have the basics right. Addressing trauma is one of the major basic issues that needs to be got right. I do not agree there is a specific way the trauma works. Every single case is unique. Even in a foster family, trauma is unique to each person in it, not just to the family itself. I do not believe there is any way you could fully evaluate and see somebody's trauma. I was in care from the age of two and am now 21, and it was only in recent years I realised it was traumatising. A huge amount of work needs to be done on what constitutes trauma, the different types of trauma and how we can see it.

As somebody who was in care for the length of time I was in care, I can only say it feels like there is a tick-the-box exercise. In this regard, it is said that because access did not go well, we will not go ahead next week. There is no point in punishing a child if access does not go well; it is not the child's fault. As we have established, the child is severely traumatised, as are the parents. There is so much work to be done on this kind of stuff. We need to focus on getting the basics right. The trauma part is huge. It is probably one of the most important pieces.

On the point on the care team around the child, in my experience there has never been a single care team. I have had over ten social workers and should have had one. Again, this feeds into the trauma aspect. All of these points are so valid but, again, they scream my point that the basics need to be got right before we can move forward on any of them.