Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister for his opening statement. I will start with what he just said about recognition. That is ultimately what foster carers want. He said in his statement that they are the backbone of alternative care. They are the backbone of child protection services. Without them, we would be lost. Ultimately, they want recognition for the work they do. This takes many forms, such as the pension issues the Minister is addressing and the payment issues to which he referred. In addition, they rightly believe they need adequate support to do this important job. I have discussed the internal therapeutic supports from Tusla on many occasions with the Minister. The regional hubs to which he referred are a positive step. The committee has discussed unmet needs in respect of disabilities and assessments of need. Bernard Gloster, when he appeared before the committee, spoke about how those unmet needs were contributing to greater complexity in cases and children coming into care. These things do not necessarily exist in a vacuum. We need to get those wider disability services and social issues right because that will impact and improve the situation for Tusla and help with that complexity. I ask the Minister to provide a timeline for the internal therapeutic supports and regional hubs. When can foster carers expect there to be staff who can help with that?

The Irish Association of Social Workers, IASW, told the committee there is a need for a Government-mandated working party. It was seeking a cross-stakeholder group to consider the ins and outs of the issues and complete a breakdown of fostering, how to improve it and what we can do to help with recruitment, retention, recognition and such issues. Would the Minister support that proposal? It has worked in the past. It is a clear recommendation to the committee from the IASW and I will be supporting it.

There are many issues I wish to raise. I will move to that of kinship care, to which the Minister referred. There are many private family arrangements that continue as such due to a fear that although the people doing the caring are good enough to care for the child, they might not pass a foster care committee.

We need to look at that and to ensure that those families first and foremost get supports beyond just child benefit if they are doing the parenting.

There are also questions about the place and role of the foster care committee. Perhaps that needs to be looked at by a Government-mandated working party so we can look at the issues of retention and recruitment of foster carers as well as looking at the kinship care issue.

While I am talking about support, another thing it would be remiss of me not to mention is the challenge in respect of the support that foster carers want. Many times we talk about how many children have an allocated social worker, and we can talk about retention and those issues within social work, but it is equally important to ask how many foster carers have an allocated social worker. I do not know if the Minister has those numbers at his fingertips, but my experience is that that number is a lot worse than the number of children who have an allocated social worker because they often get priority. What is being done to ensure that retention for the support?

I will leave it there. I might come back with some harder questions if the Chair will let me.