Mr. Cormac Quinlan:

I support fully what my colleagues said regarding voluntary care. We do not disagree at all. The proposals are right and proportionate in terms of limits. Even in advance of this legislation, we were already looking at and reviewing our approach to care planning. We recognise that other legislation now requires us to look much more rigorously at permanency for children. That is legal permanency, physical permanency in terms of where they live and relational permanency in respect of the people caring for them. That is something we are advancing, irrespective of the proposed amendments we are discussing.

I agree with my colleagues that voluntary care should really only be used in the context of reunification. Where we are focused on reunification, it is something we can use. As a social worker who was 20 years in practice, I saw it was really important for parents and carers to be able to utilise voluntary care. We work in collaboration and co-operation with parents. It is good that they can choose to place their children in care for a period because of difficulties they are experiencing and that we can support them in so doing. If we are moving to long-term care for children, however, it is important to put that on a much more structured and firm footing, which, we hope, will be done collaboratively with parents.

If we are proposing a maximum time limit on voluntary care, we need to give the issue due consideration. Reunification planning and safety planning can take time. We need to be careful in putting firm limits on that. As my colleagues said, we want to maximise our approach in addressing, through safety planning, some of the complicating factors families deal with, including drug misuse and mental health issues. That can take time. We must be very mindful of that time from a child's rights perspective, but we do not want to put a limit on it that is too short and does not facilitate us in working to maximise the option of the child returning home. That is always the first thing we consider.