Mr. Gerard Brophy:

In terms of applying a lower threshold for Travellers coming into care, there is a common perception of social workers that we intervene either too early or too late. I think this may be part of the same picture. Regarding what we try to do, our model of practice in Tusla for the past four or five years has been based on a signs of safety approach whereby we work in partnership with every family. If a family can show us they can protect the child, we can work with them and set up a safety plan and the parents and members of their network would be part of that safety plan. We will work with that family to support that child to ensure there is safety there for the child. We try to be as culturally appropriate as we can in many different situations but especially with the Travelling community.

There are, I believe, more Traveller children represented in care, but it is a matter of getting our ethnic identifier working. We are doing that in a way that is self-declaring such that we do not decide if someone is a member of the Travelling community. Rather, he or she declares that himself or herself and then we record it accurately. That will help us in the future years to plan this. We are certainly anxious not to discriminate against Traveller families in that way. We provide the maximum amount of support but we are not the only support agency. Housing and poverty are really important in this. We are working in that context.

The Deputy mentioned getting members of the Travelling community into work in social care and social work. Since 2020, we have had 19 people who have benefited from a scheme where we provide up to €5,000 a year for their support in education. We will also guarantee them when they are on that scheme a job for three years after they qualify, if they want it. We try to take a culturally appropriate approach to this whereby we try to increase the agency of these people to be in work and contribute when they are in work such that if they feel they can work in a given location, we will try to secure that for them. It is not subject to the normal numbers cap or ceilings, so it is a guarantee for those three years. At this point, we have three people who have come through that scheme working with us. We have another two people who have gone on, having done social care, to do social work. We hope over time to nurture those people to be working in our organisation over the longer period.

The Deputy mentioned kinship care and the Travelling community. Just in the past year, we have had a particular approach to this in trying to recruit members of the Travelling community for care. We have 145 members of the Travelling community who have attended information sessions over the past year, 35 have expressed an interest to go on to fostering, we have two who are now approved foster carers coming out of that process and we have two further applications in process. For a long time, we have had a project in Ballyowen Meadows where we have had families from the Travelling community come in and spend a period with support to be able to look after children. We have continued that over the years as they all extended out into the community, so we are really active in that space as well.