Ms Louise Bayliss:

It really does not matter who does it. Focus Ireland has child support workers. Obviously, we would be happy to take that on because we also have the family homeless action team and we have qualified child support workers. At the end of the day, however, it does not matter whether it is Focus Ireland or another support group doing that. It is really important that children have that burden taken off them. As I said, many children hide from their parent that they are upset too. They are aware. We hear all the time from our child support workers that children will offload and say, "I heard my mam crying in the bathroom", or "I heard my mam and dad having a fight", whatever the situation is. They know that it is a pressure pot so they tend to keep that to themselves. They do not have even the normal friendships they would otherwise have. They are embarrassed to tell their friends they are in emergency accommodation. Even if they cannot talk to their parents, they would talk to their friends, but they will not talk to their friends either. To have that outlet of a child support worker is crucial.

What we find is that our child support workers meet the children where they are. If they need counselling, they are referred on to counselling but, generally, it is just an hour chatting, playing and drawing pictures with them, building up that relationship to the point that the children can sit down and then cry with them and say, "This is what is going on, this is what is happening to me and this is why." For children to have all that pressure on them at such a tender age is so wrong.

As I said, we are all mindful of key workers for adults and individuals, but there is not the same emphasis on children. Our waiting list for child support workers is huge. We also know that 42% of families who were in emergency accommodation last year were there for more than 18 months. That is children living in that emergency accommodation for longer than 18 months. What our child support workers and front-line services are saying is that if a child is in emergency accommodation for more than six months, you start to see the deterioration in their behaviour, development and academic results. You see dysfunction in a functioning family starting to appear as well, where parents burdened with the guilt of not providing a home, even though it is not their fault, will start parenting out of guilt and functioning families suddenly have support needs. That is a concern, and we think child support workers would alleviate some of that.