Ms Bernadette Neville:

While the Bill talks about those structures around advocacy, it is also important to look at the fact that day-to-day advocacy happens through the foster carers. They are the ones who are 24-7 looking after the children and have such an in-depth knowledge of their needs. They are communicating with the social workers, schools and medical people, if there are medical needs. I would not like us to lose sight of the fact that they are core in the advocacy and in supporting children to express and articulate their views. Often, we hear from foster carers talking to us about those difficult conversations children want to have but are unsure about having, or feel unsafe about having. Their anchor becomes the foster carer, and the foster carer then helps to navigate the system with the child.

While we are talking about the bigger structures, let us also think about what we need to do to support that day-to-day advocacy work and to value the role foster carers play in supporting children to express many things and tell the stories that are quite difficult to tell. It is not to lose sight of that. When potential families come forward thinking about fostering, within the standards there is that expectation that you will be advocating on behalf of the children you are looking after. Foster carers take that very seriously and become quite frustrated when they are looking for speech and language and educational assessments. They are constantly communicating the child's need and maybe not getting the responses they are looking for.

The question is how we support foster carers to continue in that role and give them the support they need to support the children in articulating that. As I said in my statement, we have staff shortages across the board. Some children do not have an allocated social worker, so then it is the foster carer who will be picking up the phone, having those conversations and looking for services to come online for the child. Let us continue to value the role they play around advocacy.