Ms Jacinta Swann:

Ms Mockler said a lot of what I was going to say. We have done a lot of work recently with the Irish Foster Care Association, IFCA, and some foster parents and they also mention how they struggle with the visits, what the best way is to manage them and the support they need as well. Particularly during Covid-19, many of the social workers were trying very hard, as were the foster parents and the parents, to keep contact going all of the time but actually nobody knew what to say after saying hello. The foster parents did not know how to manage it and neither did the social worker or the parents. Each party involved in the children-in-care process might acknowledge that this is actually complicated, as expecting everybody to know what to do is too high a bar. We need to be honest about it and acknowledge it is not a normal situation to expect visits, for children to be in reviews. Foster carers, social workers and everybody is all stressed in it and it is not an optimum space. For me, there is something about actually acknowledging we all need to look at it again, that this is not normal and then work out how to do it in the best way we can to make it the best for the child. We can only do that by acknowledging what we do not know and what supports we need to use. This is a bit like the potential model with Aoife Bairéad and considering if that is the way we are looking at understanding the child and what we are trying to achieve in providing access. The Covid-19 experience and that technology booklet made real progress in trying to see what we did not know and how we were going to work it out together to actually make this better.

I thank the Senator for the question. Like the other questions she asked, including the one around fostering, these are the key questions we need to look at as an alternative care sector.