Ms Lara Hynes:

I might work backwards, if that is okay, and start with interagency working. It is not limited to information sharing by any means. That is a key piece in allowing agencies to work more effectively together. We took a significant amount of legal advice on this and it is always important to keep in mind that these agencies, for example CAMHS and the HSE, have their own statutory obligations under their own legislation, which is to provide services to children independent of any obligations under the Child Care Act. Some of the wording around it is because we are talking about co-operation and co-ordination in a very broad way and not being very specific. When we are not being very specific it is quite difficult to say legally that somebody shall do something when we can not be more specific about what that might be. In a sense, the provisions are informed by the existing statutory obligations of those agencies and by what is possible and workable in terms of how we can provide for greater interagency working.

Regarding aftercare and special care, the Act was changed in 2017. Additional provisions were put into the Act in respect of both. We are considering the adequacy of those areas but we felt it was too soon and that we did not have sufficient information about the current operation of the provisions that had only been introduced in 2017, some of them at the end of 2017. However, we are conscious that those areas require further consideration and we are looking at those.

On private family arrangements, we are developing an overall policy approach to that and, more broadly, for children who are not in the care of their parents, so not just private family arrangements. We have to look at the supports for children who are not in the care of their parents more broadly.