Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 9 July 2026
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality
Engagement with the Children's Residential and Aftercare Voluntary Association
2:00 am
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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On our agenda for consideration is a discussion on the provision of residential and aftercare services for children with members of the Children’s Residential and Aftercare Voluntary Association, CRAVA. We are joined at the meeting by representatives of a number of voluntary organisations that are members of CRAVA: Mr. Terry Dignan, chairperson of CRAVA and director of services at Don Bosco Care; Mr. Gordon Hill, senior manager at Crosscare homeless services, Mr. Vivian Molloy, social care manager at Sherrard House; Mr. David Power, director of services at Smyly Trust Services; Ms Róisín Stewart, director of services at St. Bernard's Children's Services; and Ms Margaret Maguire, director of services at the Cottage Home Child and Family Services.
They are all really welcome to the meeting this morning. It might be a welcome break from the sun. The purpose of this meeting is to engage with CRAVA, which is a representative body for voluntary, not-for-profit organisations. It provides homeless, residential, aftercare and outreach services to vulnerable children, young people and their families.
Before we begin, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through. There is nobody on Microsoft Teams. In advance of inviting our witnesses to deliver their opening statements, I advise them of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. Witnesses and members are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to the committee. This means that they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege. It is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.
Witnesses will be given five minutes to deliver their opening statement. This will then be followed by a questions and answers session with our members. Before I invite the witnesses to deliver their opening statements, we are in the middle of a heat wave and I encourage people to drink as much water as possible. If we need to have a second round of questions, we can take a break for people to use the facilities. It is key that we keep hydrated.
I will now invite the witnesses to deliver their opening statements. I invite Mr. Dignan to deliver the opening statement on behalf of CRAVA.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
I thank the Cathaoirleach and the members of the committee for inviting us to present here today. CRAVA serves as the representative body for all of the voluntary care organisations nationally. We represent residential care, aftercare, fostering, aftercare outreach and homeless services. All of our members are voluntary organisations that deliver high-quality, therapeutic residential care and transitional support to children and young people nationally. Through this statement, we wish to offer our perspective on what we consider the key issues impacting our care system. The current crisis in Irish residential care, aftercare and the alternative care system generally is the predictable result of structural choices, investment choices, a lack of high-level planning, and policy omissions.
The issue affecting us most obviously is the capacity crisis. The Irish care system is experiencing an unprecedented capacity and operational crisis that manifests in two particularly distinct ways. One is the critical shortage of mainstream residential care placements and the other is a near total absence of specialised, high-support options for children and young people presenting with complex therapeutic needs. There is an historical root cause to this. This manifested in December 2013, when the Ombudsman for Children's office published a meta analysis. This identified seven repetitive root cause issues impacting the provision of services for children in care. The report explicitly identified the insufficient availability of residential care as one of a number of chronic structural defects in the State's care apparatus and the alternative care system.
To rectify this, the report recommended that the State urgently design a comprehensive strategic development plan to determine the optimal role of residential care within the alternative care system. This plan was intended to shape future services, guarantee equitable regional distribution and ensure that placement capacity matched the number and particular needs of children placed in the care of the State. Unfortunately, this was never picked up on.
We have a number of recommendations that we will outline. The first is that, to address the core issues, the State needs to undertake a comprehensive expert review of the care system. This would identify systemic failings and develop a fully costed, long-term reform strategy to develop a care system that meets the needs of every child and young person placed in State care. This strategy would focus on rebalancing the shape, type and scale of provision, looking at the balance between residential care, foster care, kinship care, early intervention and all other key actions. It would also include models of care and wrap-around support for more complex needs as part of a wider vision for alternative care to make it needs-based, therapeutic and child centred.
The second recommendation is to rebalance voluntary sector capacity and reduce reliance on for-profit care. I remind the committee members that, in the strategy produced in 2022, this was an overarching objective that, unfortunately, was not achieved. The State should formalise a clear policy commitment to reduce reliance on the for-profit provision of residential care to end the commodification of care for those placed in the care of the State. In partnership with Tusla, this could be implemented through a phased strategy of expansion of State and voluntary, non-profit infrastructure to ensure that public funds are directed entirely toward direct care delivery.
Another recommendation is on an overhaul the funding model and reform section 56. The service-level agreement, SLA, grant system, which applies to the voluntary care providers, should be a sustainable cost recovery model, which it is not. It should include capital funds to allow proper modernisation of services and capacity increase in the voluntary sector.
On the pay and conditions issue, we recommend the restoration of parity of esteem in pay, pension and working conditions between social care professionals employed in section 56 voluntary care organisations and their public sector colleagues. Historically, this was in place but was basically removed in the not-too-distant past.
On the design of an evidence-based multi-annual capacity plan, we recommend that the Department, in partnership with Tusla, develop and implement a data-driven, five-year national strategic development plan for residential and aftercare services, as outlined by the Ombudsman for Children in 2013 and again this year.
Finally, to reform transitional aftercare infrastructure, the State must expand the statutory entitlement to comprehensive aftercare services for every young person in the care system. Adult homelessness cannot be an acceptable outcome for young people leaving the care system. This requires investment to ensure young people experience a continuous, secure pathway to independent living.
We stand ready to work with all of the stakeholders within the alternative care system, such as Departments, Tusla, care delivery organisations and everyone else involved. By stabilising the voluntary sector, committing to equitable funding and addressing profit making in the care of vulnerable children, Ireland can build a resilient, legally compliant and genuinely therapeutic alternative care system that prioritises the rights and well-being of the children and young people it is trusted to protect. While this is challenging, we believe that it is an entirely achievable goal.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Dignan. It is proposed to publish the opening statement to the Oireachtas website. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Before I called members, they all know that they will have seven minutes speaking time. This allocation must include the response from the witnesses as well as the question. There will be no asking questions with five seconds remaining, as that does not leave time for the witnesses to respond. I will allow a brief second round of questioning if members wish. I will now call members in accordance with the speaking rota circulated.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank all of the witnesses for being here this morning, their briefing document and their opening statement. Before I start my questions, I know that CRAVA very much believes that foster care is always preferable, but the reality is we will always need a level of residential care services. Who will deliver those services? It is my firm belief that, if we do not fund the voluntary and community sector to meet its basic costs so that it is not relying on fundraising efforts - frankly, it is embarrassing that it is put in that position - we will leave it to private operators to take over. That is something we should not countenance and we should not allow it to happen any more than it already does.
On the commitment that was made by Tusla in terms of its plan to expand capacity within the voluntary and community sector, I presume that, given how clear Tusla was on the number of beds it wanted to expand to in the voluntary sector, it engaged intensively with CRAVA on that and how it would work. If that was Tusla's intention, funding would naturally have been made available. None of the voluntary organisations present have funds in their back pockets to build capacity and extend their services. What level of engagement has there been with Tusla on this?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
On the strategy for essential care that was published in 2022, there was no engagement with the voluntary sector on that. A total of 31 beds were allocated to the sector but there was no engagement either before, during or after the strategy was published. The fundamental flaw in that was that the voluntary sector had no access to capital funding. To increase bed numbers, you need to increase the number of properties. Without the capital funding from the get go, it was impossible for us to increase by even a single bed.
We were absolutely in line with the ambition to increase the number of beds. The target was 110 beds over the four-year period of the strategy. Unfortunately, we were not able to be an active partner in that because we had no access to funds to increase bed numbers.
The result of that was, between 2022 when it launched and today, we did not increase by a single bed.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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It is very strange to put forward an intention to expand the sector without engaging with the sector. Obviously, the organisations are not gathering money. The money they get is for provision of the services they provide. They do not hold on to it to build capacity. Obviously, if the funding was not going to be made available, none of the organisations would be in a position to expand.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
No, that is true. Something which will come again, and my colleagues will speak on it, is that one of the fundamental issues is the different models that exist in the system currently. We have an alternative care system which should be an organic, holistic system. We have two different funding models. We, as voluntary organisations, are on a service level agreement model, SLA, where we are given a certain amount of money without negotiation and we have to provide whatever service we can with that. The for-profit model is a commissioning model where the Government pays, through Tusla as an agency, for each bed so each bed is costed based on the particular need. They are two very different models. The service level agreement will give us no flexibility to increase funding.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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Has there been a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of the Department on the cost of the for-profit model versus what Mr. Dignan would need to run his service and be sustained?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Not that we are aware of. There are ongoing comparisons of cost per child between voluntary and private providers which really provide nothing because you cannot seem to compare the costs. You have to do an analysis on the social benefits to all of the outcomes. It would be easy enough to say from our perspective our focus is purely on outcomes for children and young people. Income is not part of it; we do not make a profit. A fundamental question has to be asked. If we have a care system where, in one place, our sector is not paid for the service we provide to the State and another sector can make a profit from State funding, that is the anomaly that needs to be addressed. Again, this is not being critical of individual organisations. It is being critical of a structure and a system that has two different methods of payment, one which allows profit to be made and one which does not even cover the full cost of service, which is the situation we are in.
Ms Róisín Stewart:
We did expand. We opened a second service in 2023. The anomaly for us is the property we are currently situated in was handed over to the State as part of redress, so it is actually Tusla property. It was willing to give capital funding for us to expand so we did open four additional beds in 2023.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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That speaks to the fact that money is not really an issue. Money is there if you are for-profit and you are private but it not necessarily there if you are voluntary, meeting the regulations, being inspected and accountable for every red cent you receive, as all the organisations here are. There is a question mark over that.
I am really concerned to learn that, internationally, Ireland is being looked at as a place where money can be made on the back of our care system. Given that all the witnesses are in those circles and that world, is the idea that Ireland is being looked at as a place to make profit on the back of our most vulnerable children, who are the responsibility of the State, something they have come across?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
If we are honest, we have to say it obviously is. There are profits that can be made. On a cursory look at the kind of businesses that have moved into the care sector, there are commercial businesses in building and development and all kinds of businesses which have moved across and that have a side business in care. That would tell us it is attractive to come here and make profits. It is not just confined to the case of children. We have seen this happening in the care of older people and in early years. Private companies will move where there are profits being made. We have to compete with that as well. We understand their motivation for doing that. Our concern is we should not be commodifying children who are specifically in the care of the State. Every child, regardless of their challenges, whether it is disability or others, deserves every support the State can give, but for the cohort of children and young people we are dealing the State is the de facto corporate parent. In many cases they do not have families who can advocate appropriately for them, so they are fully reliant on the State to implement its duty of care as a prudent parent, and we feel the State has failed to do that and has failed to properly plan and properly invest in a system that actually meets the needs of every child. We have been in an emergency situation for-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We will come back. I call Deputy Ward.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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I thank everyone for coming in today. How many volunteer organisations do the witnesses represent? Do they represent any in Donegal or across Ulster?
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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That is fine. The witnesses were saying historical policy is the root cause of insufficient availability of residential care. Will they explain that further? What policies are they actually referring to?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
I will pass on to other colleagues. I will quickly answer that. The policy which has been extant is that residential is seen as a placement of last resort. It is not seen as having the same importance as every other type of care. It has been seen historically as a place of last resort. As we have said, we agree that early intervention is the first step to stop children going into care. Where children then do go into care, foster care is the best alternative where that is feasible. However, there are a cohort of children for whom foster care at that time would not be an appropriate placement. The State has taken the position that residential care is the last resort. It has said that no child under 12 should be placed in residential care - that was historic - and only 5% of all children referred to care should be placed in residential care, with foster care being the primary option. We do not feel that was ever realistic. We now see an increasing number of children coming into residential care because there is also a crisis in foster care. Those children have more complex needs. The capacity is not there to meet those needs because, effectively, we have a mainstream care system which is now expected to take every child regardless of complex needs, apart from special care. In the not-too-distant past we had high-support units which would deal with children with more complex needs. That not only acted as a stop for children moving into special care but also acted as a step-down for children coming from special care into high support care and then, it would be hoped, into mainstream care or fostering. We had a system that made more sense in the past. We eliminated that. We got rid of all our high-support units. It is the policy around that. They are the kinds of policies we are speaking to in terms of making residential care something the State does not really see as important. We disagree.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
Some of this comes down to a lack of a long-term vision. We have never had it in our State. Our State has stumbled from crisis to crisis in terms of child protection. Fundamentally, we have no long-term goal. There is no overarching policy. Tusla is only a State agency. It is an underfunded State agency. It is being asked to do things it has not been given the money to do. Our State is responsible for children who are in care. That goes across Departments. The Ombudsman for Children report of 2013, which we mentioned, is strongly echoed in the report published March this year which again highlighted that our State requires a residential care system that is well funded and strategically planned with a five-year cycle based on statutory and voluntary providers while shrinking the for-profit. There might always be a need for some for-profit but it should be led by values-led State and voluntary providers. We have never had that. The Department is working on a vision at the moment and we strongly push that the recommendations in the report of the Ombudsman for Children in March are looked at, that it is strategic, with metrics to measure against, and that it is a funded policy with sustainable funding and capital to make sure the most vulnerable children in our State are part of a system that is actually planned for them. Tusla is regularly hard done by because it is constantly in a crisis response with the numbers it is under pressure to meet and with very high-profile cases. It is working in a system where it has never been funded correctly to deliver what the State has decided are its priorities for children in care.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
The crisis we are in now has been coming a long time, and long before Tusla was established. It is not something that came about with the establishment of Tusla and it is not one that Tusla can solve. Tusla has to be part of the solution but it also needs the various Departments, all the stakeholders, the care providers and HIQA to come together and look at this in detail. That is why there needs to be a proper, holistic review of the care system to identify the systemic failings, how we can address those, what it will cost and the amount of time we will give it. This could be a 20-year plan. We are not trying to do something in the lifetime of any one government. This is a State issue.
We have a very dark history of the care of children in our State going back to before the foundation of the State. It is something we can address, but it cannot be addressed by who cuts the ribbon. It is really about who starts the journey.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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Fundamentally, the witnesses believe that the State has failed in this, that this has been long term, and that the way we could manoeuvre to fix this long term would be to engage with stakeholders like the voluntary association to put a framework in place.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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In the witnesses' view, this has been going on for generations.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Yes. This has been there since the foundation of the State, when it was probably the appropriate time to have a vision for the care system. Certainly, through policy and the lack of policy, we have continually failed to understand what we are trying to achieve. We have not had a roadmap, we have not had an implementation plan, and we certainly have not had the funding put behind it to be realistic around what we are trying to achieve.
As Mr. Hill said, there are only 550 children in residential care. There are only between 6,000 and 6,500 in State care generally. We have a smaller number of children in care than any of our neighbouring jurisdictions - Northern Ireland, England, Scotland or Wales - yet each of those countries between 2018 and 2026 had a full review of their care systems to find where the systemic failings are and to put in an action plan to address those. We have not even got there yet.
Mr. David Power:
We are at a critical junction when we talk about the sustainability of the volunteer providers. Unless we take the journey of a review of the system and proper resourcing, and unless all the stakeholders and the partners take the journey together, we will find in years to come that there may not be a voluntary provider sector within it. The junction is right in front of us. It is about sustainability and being resourced to do the job that the State wants us to do.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their opening statements. I acknowledge the work they do as a group in representing all our children in care. What the witnesses have really spelled out is that a small bit of a unified approach is needed here to go to the State to say that the roadmap we are all looking for has been on the back burner since 2013. The bit of a report has not gone anywhere to justify the sector's cause and to justify it for all the kids in care. Ultimately, it has led to the capacity and staffing issues and the underfunding. The witnesses have not really specified yet what sector has been underfunded the most here. It was said that Tusla, as the lead in childcare, has been underfunded. What we are left with now is a legacy issue that we have to face off. In Mr. Dignan's view, over the last decade, what have been the most practical and serious consequences of where we are right now and what has led to this?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Again, it comes back to the absence of any kind of a joined-up plan that involves all the stakeholders. To be fair, Tusla developed its strategic plan for residential care, not for alternative care. We are also speaking in the knowledge that the programme for Government has committed to creating a short-term action plan to address the current crisis, and then a longer term vision. We have engaged briefly with the group representing the Government who are developing that. We do not have a really good understanding of what that is or what it looks like. We do not know if any money has been put aside. Fundamentally, we have never had a plan and we have never had a budget that would say what we can achieve with a certain amount of money over the next 15 years. Successive Governments continue to follow this roadmap. That is the fundamental point.
There is another point. The voluntary sector has shrunk over the last two decades. We have fewer members in CRAVA now than we had ten or 20 years ago. As Mr. Hill said, within the next five years we can lose more, simply because some of our members are not financially sustainable. They are building up debts because they are not sufficiently funded. Again, Tusla recognises this and agrees with us but has said honestly that if it cannot get the money, it cannot give it to us. That is a fact and we accept that. Tusla is not funded sufficiently. We are not just saying this today; the ombudsman has said it. The previous CEO, Bernard Gloster, has said it. If the money is not there, Tusla cannot give it to us - we accept that - but fundamentally the money has to be there. These are some of the most vulnerable children and young people in the State and they are placed directly in the care of the State.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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Who should be accountable for implementing this plan as a need?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Once the plan is developed, it can be led by any expert group. It can be led by the Office of the Taoiseach. It could be led by various Departments. There should be a multistakeholder approach to this such that everybody's voice is heard and everybody has an input into it. It would then be up to the State to decide who it would want to implement the plan. It may well be Tusla, if it had capacity, but it could be Tusla in partnership with other stakeholders as well.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
Some of us have experience of being on national strategies that have been developed, such as the homelessness strategies and youth homelessness strategies, that are led by individual Departments. It can be a struggle then sometimes to get other Departments to come along and fulfil their roles. It is part of the programme for Government. The Taoiseach's office has the child poverty section attached to it. We strongly believe that if it was led by the Taoiseach's office, other Departments would be more likely to play their role in it too. Obviously, young people in care will have issues related to education and will often have issues related to mental health and physical health. They may have issues related to the justice system. It is a multi-Department approach rather than just the Department of children, but the Department of children is a key player in making sure our children are seen in an holistic way.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I thank the witnesses for their opening address and for sending in the statement. It is so important that it goes on public record how much we are failing children in the State. It is refreshing to hear the witnesses saying clearly that the privatisation of care is evident. We have seen it in nursing care, we have seen it early years care and we have seen it in this sector. Big corporations and companies will chase the money, so we know there is money to be made from it. In other jurisdictions, there have been full reviews of care systems and they have made recommendations. It is shocking that we have not. Have we ever had an independent review of the care system? Has there ever been a long-term plan for alternative care? We have been failing children since the foundation of the State when the care of children was handed over to charitable organisations. Now we are failing again and they are being handed over to private organisations, and we can see crisis after crisis in specialist emergency care arrangements.
As someone who has worked in the volunteer and community sector, I know it is a fantastic model. I agree that Tusla is not the problem. I think the problem is the absolute underfunding from the Department of children and that needs to be said. It needs to be said very clearly that the Department of children is accountable here to start looking after children in alternative care in our State. I would love to hear more about why the witnesses' voices were not included in the review in 2022 or why their voices were not listened to. Can they see anything that should change? It is bizarre that the organisation has been given SNAs to deliver a service on the State's behalf, but then it still has to fundraise to make that service sustainable. It makes no sense when private organisations can come in, set their price, say what they want and be given that same money. It is bizarre and it is actually shameful. I would love to hear the witnesses' recommendations for what they would like to change. What would their recommendations be? Even if it is just two or three points, what do we have to do to make a significant difference?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Fundamentally, it comes back to what the Senator has said. We need to bring together everyone involved in this - all of the stakeholders, including Departments, Tusla, HIQA and the private, statutory and voluntary service providers - to decide on what are the systemic failings, what is not working in this system and what we have to do to make sure it works effectively and efficiently in the long term.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Does Mr. Dignan believe all of the stakeholders should come together for an independent review?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
It should be independent. The reviews carried out in other jurisdictions were independent reviews. That does not mean the Government is not involved and does not drive it, but it means there are other independent stakeholders in there who have an objective view and maybe have expertise in addressing some of the systemic failings, as well as people who can put those plans together. It has to be a collective approach. We are all working on behalf of the State. The State has asked us to work on its behalf but does not seem to be able to pay us what it costs to do that work, for some reason. That is fundamental to this. Everything becomes more expensive. We have an increased cost of living. If we cannot get increases through the SLAs year on year, how are we expected to pay the bills as they come in? We are talking about electricity, food, clothing for children-----
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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When the organisations apply to get SLAs with Tusla, I am sure they put in staff costings but they are just given a set budget. Are they told they have to manage in the confines of a set budget and that is it?
Ms Margaret Maguire:
We get a fixed amount. Staff costs take the majority of that. Whatever is left is what we have to make do with. We have been told to cut service delivery. We are on our knees financially, as a sector. As an organisation we offered to expand by opening two houses but we never got a formal response. That was in 2022 and 2023. We are coming to a juncture where a lot of voluntary organisations will have to shut up shop because they do not have sufficient funds to keep the lights on and doors open. We are around for 147 years but I do not know if we will make it to our 150th year.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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That is shocking.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Where is the oversight here? If we are looking at cost-benefit analysis, are the social outcomes for children taken into account?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
No, they are not. There has been no cost-benefit analysis done. As I said earlier, we cannot compare what the private or voluntary organisations charge per child. We have to look at what we are getting for that money and what outcomes we are seeing for children in care. For example, are the children in care that has a therapeutic approach? Is there a model of care? Are the staff experienced and qualified to carry out that work? We have to look at all of that. It is not just about €5,000 versus €6,000 a week; it is about what we are getting for that money. It does not matter if we are paying €20,000 a week - we have to consider whether we are getting a benefit from that €20,000 that justifies paying such an amount. That has to be done. How can the State continually offer money to us or to private providers without knowing what we are doing with that money?
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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In other jurisdictions, are social outcomes taken into account if there is a cost-benefit analysis done?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
They are moving to pass legislation to ensure the for-profit sector is not allowed to be part of the care of children in care. The UK has produced a report on the for-profit sector which has shown that profit-driven care has a negative impact on outcomes for children. Our own Ombudsman for Children released the Let’s Get It Right! report in March of this year which looks stunningly like the report from 2013. This again focuses on the rights of children, the child’s voice and the outcomes for children, particularly when they get to aftercare and the point of leaving care and end up in homelessness. We have some reports, such as those produced by our Ombudsman for Children, that clearly point the way, but the State has never been focused enough to move beyond crisis thinking to long-term strategic planning.
We regularly see it reported in the media that voluntary services cost €7,000 a week and private services cost something else, but it is like comparing apples and oranges. They are two completely different models. Our fee is set. If I have five young people in my house, it is the same amount of money as if I have one. I might only have one because the child has a very high level of need and this is agreed, whereas in the private service it is done by young person. The same five young people will cost more than €1 million more to house for a year. People talk about one costing €7,000 a week but they are completely different models of funding.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I hope I am not repeating anything. I have a question. I apologise for missing the beginning. I want to ask about the aftercare element. We hear about the cliff edge when children become adults and come out of care. We heard about it last week in Buswells Hotel with the Irish Foster Carers Association, IFCA. From our point of view, it should not come down to money. That is not what it is about here; it is about children and adults. It is expensive, however, especially in relation to foster carer income or foster care. We are investing all of this money and then we are happy for these children, when they become adults, to go into homelessness or not be supported in their adult life. From our witnesses’ points of view, what are the main changes we need to see in aftercare?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
There are a couple of key things. Every time I have this conversation, I am reminded of a young man who came through care and stated that even the word “aftercare” makes it sound like we have stopped caring. That stays in my mind. I would never have thought of it like that until he said it. This young man, who is now in his 20s, went through care and ended up homeless. He went to college and is now doing well in his life but he noted that phrase.
We have created a cliff edge. Tusla has had to become a bit legalistic due to funding restrictions. It stops at 18 years of age. That is our legal requirement. Most of us would agree that with our legislation and our values as a State, that should be the floor, not the ceiling, of the care we respond to. We have young people who leave care and go directly to homeless services. My organisation also provides homeless services. One of the worst things you can see in such services is someone in their 30s who you knew as a teenager in care. We have hard stops at the ages of 18 and 21. If a person happens to not be able for education, he or she gets even less support. We have an aftercare system that is chronically underfunded and does not have a set goal of setting a young person up to be independent and not homeless. We have only started in the past year to count the number of young people who end up in homelessness. This will be the first time we have even counted that. We have legislation that covers entitlements to aftercare but it is exceptionally restrictive. For example, I have had two young people in the past year who were not a full year in care before they turned 18 and so they were entitled to nothing. On their 18th birthday, they were brought to Dublin City Council to register as homeless and ended up in shared rooms with grown men who were long-term homeless. Nothing was done in the lead-up to their birthday even though their social workers assessed them as having no other supports whatsoever.
I do not know about committee members, but I certainly was not ready to be grown up and manage myself when I turned 18. When a person is leaving care, he or she has nothing to fall back on. It is not like he or she can go home to mammy when things are not going well; that is not there. Organisations like ourselves, which have been the long-term touchstone for young people, provide the supports. We must have a clear strategy for each young person. Some of them are going to be very traumatised, and they are not going to be ready when they are 18 or 19 years of age. They might be in a better space at the age of 20 or 21. It is very important for them to know that if they come back, they are not going to be told "No". We have a really unusual thing in this country: the national youth policies that have been renewed - we had the Better Outcomes, Better Futures policy and now we have the Young Ireland policy - go up to the age of 25 or 26. However, if you come from care, you are helped up to the age of 21, or maybe 23 if you stay in college or education. Our most vulnerable young people get the least amount of support because our national youth policy does not join up with our care system.
I have met some brilliant people in Tusla. This is 100% down to Tusla not having enough money and therefore having to prioritise the crisis in children's care. I have met people who were quite upset by the idea of having to bring a young person they had worked with for years to a homeless service because no plan had been put in place to prevent that. We had a youth homeless strategy, but it ended last year. There are supposed to be new protocols put in place, but they are not there or are not working. The State, across a number of Departments but particularly the Department of children and Tusla, really needs to own that. We need to demand that the resources are put in place to fund aftercare to appropriate levels to support our young people when they leave care, and to be a real touchstone for them in their life moving forward.
As a final point, a lot of this is very depressing. It is a real downer for our staff. It is a motivation killer when we see a kid leaving care and going to a service. However, the energy we get when we meet a young person who did well after coming out of the care system and is an adult now is immense.
I met a young man and his partner recently. They have kids. He has a job and owns his own house. It is such a boost to everybody who works in this sector. That is why we believe it is an achievable goal. The man in question was quite chaotic in his late teens. Life had gone quite pear-shaped for him. He has experienced a lot of trauma, but is now doing amazing. He has those memories of how he was treated in the house. He remembers the staff and having support. If there is a hard cut at 18 years of age, the outcome for young people can only be negative.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Going back to what Mr. Hill said about how it is structured, we are dealing with young people in care who typically are traumatised. As a result of that, they may have a very fractured second level education; that is, if they have a second level education. We then expect them to choose education or training to get their aftercare allowance and continue to be able to support to themselves up to the age of 21. We do not take any account of children or young people who do not have the capacity to engage in training or education. What happens to them at 18 if they cannot take that up? What about the young people who have made it, who are maybe going to do a master's in order to progress and who, at 23, have that lifeline cut off? We know that our own children can continue in education as long as we feel they are able for it. Some of them go on until 24 or 25. The children we are discussing have to make those choices long before they are capable of making them. These are children who are traumatised and vulnerable, but we seem to treat them as any other young person making choices about their education, training and independent living. That does not make any sense.
We need to have a more flexible structure. It can be needs based. Not every young person needs support after 23, but some certainly do. We need to take account of that. We also need to take account of the circumstances of someone who is 18, who has been known to welfare services from the age of 12 or 13 and who, because they were only in care 11 months, have no entitlement to aftercare despite that they may have no family supports or a responsible adult to look after them. We are not saying that the system has to be absolutely flexible, but it certainly has to take account of the fact that every young person is different. We can create a system that accounts for the differences in the young people we see.
Mr. David Power:
Smyly Trust Services has been providing State care since the 1850s. It has been around a long time. We had an aftercare service that closed in 2023. It was a very good model that provided transitional housing, outreach services, assessments of need and drop-in services. On the residential side, there is no expectation to stay in with the child for a certain amount of time. That puts extra resources on the residential unit because we are spreading ourselves thin in meeting the needs. We have a barbecue every year. This year's barbecue will be happening on Sunday. All past residents will come back to that, if they can. Because we are therapeutic community, they tell their stories about being part of a family and a community. We hear the stories. They will bring their kids with them. The kids will run around the garden for the afternoon if we are lucky. Last year, it rained, but it is due to be sunny on Sunday. We hear the stories about how important aftercare is. Mr. Hill is right. This aftercare bit and the label we put on it - it is nearly true care. People are in the care of the State, and that is their family. Those who care for them are really important and cannot just disappear, because that is not what families do.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I apologise for being late. Will the witnesses name the 13 organisations that they represent? Perhaps that question has been asked already. Where are those organisations based geographically?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Sure. Here in the room, we have the Cottage Home and Family Services, St. Bernard's Children's Services, which is based in Fethard in County Tipperary, and Smyly Trust Services, which, as Mr. Power said, has been in operation for 150 years. I am from Don Bosco Care, which was founded in the 1970s. Crosscare Homeless Service, with which the Deputy is probably familiar, and Sherrard House are also represented. The other organisations are the Peter McVerry Trust, Focus Ireland, Wellsprings and Good Shepherd, which are both based in Cork, and Streetline Children's Residential Care, which is located on the North Circular Road in Dublin. We represent both large and small organisations across-----
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Are those entities still identified as voluntary organisations, even through some of them are also approved housing bodies?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Don Bosco Care is an approved housing body. We are a voluntary charity organisation providing residential, aftercare and other services. Some of us are approved housing bodies as well. Don Bosco Care has three capital assistance scheme properties and offers permanent housing for young people from a background of being in care. There can be other young people as well, however, because they are managed by the local council in terms of housing need and housing lists. That is how that works. In terms of the Deputy's-----
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Are the five organisations that became financially unstable still operating?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
They are still operating. Don Bosco Care is going through a merger with two of those, because they decided that joining Don Bosco Care was the only way they could remain sustainable. We are still going through that process of coming together to maintain beds in the system and become more sustainable. There are others that are experiencing severe financial difficulties. We will have to see whether they can continue. Effectively, if you are not paid for the full cost of your service and your are basically subsidising the State to bridge the gap, you can only do that through fundraising or building up debt. Fundraising in this sector is quite difficult. That is possibly because there is a general perception that children in care are well looked after. In other words, that they have a place to live and why would our organisations need money. When we look at providing a high-quality care services, we can see that staff training and clinical supervision for staff have to be funded. There is also the fact that the maintenance of ageing properties is increasing exponentially. Just keeping our properties up to standard costs an awful lot of money. That is not covered to any extent in the SLA. In the context of providing additional supports for children regarding educational assessments, psychological assessments and dealing with complex cases, it all adds up. As the SLA is not a negotiation, it is just a case of "This is the best we can do." Again, that is not being critical of Tusla; it is just a fact. That is a basic defeat of the State.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
Even at a very basic level, the SLA clearly lays out what we have to have in terms of insurance, IT and all of that stuff. However, there is no link with the funding that is provided to do those things. It is not based on cost-recovery model; it is based on what we need to have in order to be a well-governed and well-run organisation. We are then given a certain amount of money on that basis. They are not linked. They would have been linked prior to the recession. Some of us have been doing this for decades. There would always have been 1% or 1.5% of the cost of living provided each year. That never happened after the recession. It has lasted nearly ten years. There has been no increase. There are bills for electricity and insurance. The cost of our insurance has for the almost doubled over the past ten years. However, the non-pay funding has stayed the same. All of us in this room have had to deal with increases in our electricity and heating bills over the past few years. All we got in the way of assistance was the odd one-off measure during Covid. A cost-of-living increase has not been built in. That is something that Tusla has looked for repeatedly.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I want to get some clarity on one sentence in the opening statement to the effect that the procurement model applied to private operators operated on an entirely different economic logic. Is it the same process for private and voluntary?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I apologise. I am not sure if Mr. Dignan's microphone is on.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
As Mr. Hill said, we work to a service level agreement. We get a set amount. For a five-bed residential unit, we get approximately €1.2 million annually to care for four children in that unit. There are between 12 and 14 staff. On a side issue, in the performance statement that the Minister brought forward for Tusla in February 2025, the figures produced by the Department stated that the amount was between €1.6 million and €1.8 million. We feel that is not accurate in terms of what we are actually paid to run the service.
In the private sector, it is done on the basis of commissioning. It is per bed. As Mr. Hill said before the Deputy came in, if we have five children in a unit, we get that money. If we have one child in the unit, we get the same money. In the private sector, the State commissions beds. This means that private operators sell each bed on an ongoing basis. They charge whatever they feel is reasonable, depending on the complexity of the child, etc. They have some discretion over their funding and control over what they get. We do not.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Could the organisations the witnesses represent operate on that basis?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
As I explained earlier, they are fundamentally different things. For the same unit or house, it would be about €1 million more. I do not think the State should be paying that. It also allows for profit to be taken out. No money that comes to us leaves the sector. It is only put in. The State should be funding the service to be provided for vulnerable children and it should be one on the basis of a cost-recovery model. The other model is great in a time of crisis when we do not have enough beds because of a historical lack of planning, and that has been needed. It is much more expensive. Prices are only going to increase in the long term. It is not based around the service for young people. It is around a bed for tonight, because we will be on the news tonight or in court tomorrow as a result of a child needing a placement. It is not strategic, long-term thinking about what is the best system that we can have for vulnerable children in residential care.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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From the experience of the witnesses, what are the physical characteristics of an ideal institutional or residential setting - obviously not foster care - where children would get optimal care?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
They are laid out very clearly. We have national standards. It is basically building a homely environment, ideally residential houses in residential areas. The best are detached houses and a little bit of a garden is always good. It is based on building the concept of a family home and moving away from old ideas of institutional care that are long gone with the national standards we have, with a qualified staff team and correct ratios attached so the right care and environment can be built. Ideally the staff stay long term and in our services they tend to do so. Relationships get built over a long period of time and children who have experienced trauma require this.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The for-profit operators have a greater level of flexibility in how they operate and they can jump in for emergency placements when everything has gone absolutely wrong, for want of a better term. I am trying very hard not to use particular terminology; something about the fan came to mind. It is similar to what we had in residential care for those with disabilities and the idea of people who have no plan for their child to be placed as they get older. If that child ends up in an emergency department then the for-profit sector kicks in. This is what we are talking about. It is the same scenario.
Again, we are talking about the lack of planning. What is needed is a comprehensive review. We look at what the need is, get the analysis and then provide the services that look after that need. We have had it here many times. As much as it is easy to hammer Tusla, and particularly when we talk about individual cases, the complexity and the issues it is dealing with at the minute include not having enough social workers, social care workers or foster carers. Therefore, we also know, and this was alluded to earlier, that the thresholds have increased for these emergency interventions. This is accepting that early family support interventions are insufficient also. From beginning to end we are absolutely failing. Even if somebody has come through the system they could have an imperfect exit. If they are willing to continue in education they will lose whatever payment there is. If they do not have the capacity to get into education they will be lost. I understand it is a different service that the witnesses who are in the voluntary sector provide versus the for-profit operators. Logic would tell us to take them out of the equation anyway.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
Recently we had a young person who was known to the State since he was three months old. Well over 30 child protection referrals were made but he was not taken into care until after he turned 17. The punishment for this is that he does not qualify for after-care. For all of the early intervention work, which I have no doubt was being done with great social work and parental work to try to help, the parent would have been better off letting the child go into care earlier because there is a knock-on effect afterwards whereby he does not qualify for after-care.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It is terrible. I remember somebody working in early support talking about a particular family who said they did just enough to keep the child in the house but looking back it was the wrong thing because there was not sufficient capacity to look after the children properly.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is a nightmare scenario we want to avoid but there are times and places when it is the safest thing.
Mr. David Power:
One of the things with regard to voluntary providers that has been so successful over the years is, for instance, Smyly Trust Services has had staff stay with us for 40 years. We do not have the massive turnover we see in private provider organisations. We see a continuity of care. When children come in it is the same adults who turn up for them over and over, even in difficult times. What will happen if we do not get the sustainability right is that we will not have this. We will not have the resources to provide good care and we will get the turnover whereby people come in for a year to gain experience. The experience they get is top quality.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is commitment to care and for-profit is about making profit, let us be clear. Obviously we are talking about a system that does not work, is not fit for purpose and does not wash its own face. How many operations are facing possible closure? Obviously they are all in severe danger if there is fundraising.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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How many children do they look after?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I know this is an unfair question but could any comparison be given between a CRAVA-provided service and the overall cost of the for-profit sector offering as close to the same, while accepting it is not the same?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It is €2 million.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It has been recorded as €1.6 million to €1.8 million but really it is €1.2 million.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I understand.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Will CRAVA provide us with these figures? It would be worthwhile. We will have to deal with the Minister and it will be important.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
There is a values issue that we really want to emphasise. The young person I spoke about who was known since he was three months old moved to homeless services. If he had been in a private unit the bed would have stopped being paid and the advocacy work would not have happened. We held onto him longer to try to advocate for him. We are able to write letters saying this is not okay and it is a letdown because our only interest is the care of the young person. The profit on the bed does not matter. That is not our thing. This is a core difference in the different models. It is the ability to advocate and say this is not okay. It will not happen with a provider getting paid so long as the person is in the bed.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Obviously an overall review is required. We all get underresourcing and the lack of planning. The high-level units have been got rid of so I assume there is a big gap when dealing with high-level complexity. This is why we have the problem with special emergency arrangements.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Go raibh maith agat Deputy Ó Murchú. We will now go to Senator Keogan.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I will come back to it after.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I apologise for missing the opening statement and I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee to discuss this very important topic when it comes to the care of our children in the care of the State and particularly the after-care model. I am deeply alarmed at the for-profit commercial sector, which now controls over 70% of our residential care placements. The State cannot outsource its moral duties to private equity. Wales legally committed to eliminating private profit from children's care. Why is Ireland moving in the opposite direction and letting commercial operators dictate our capacity? The model the witnesses have exposed today has a total lack of common sense. Voluntary care costs €4,000 or €5,000 weekly while private care balloons to €6,500. A five-placement house saves the State €800,000 annually compared with the private model. How can we justify this predatory spot purchasing while five of our own long-standing voluntary organisations face financial ruin?
There is another issue in adult homelessness. Child protection failures lead directly to catastrophic societal outcomes. It has been stated with absolute clarity that adult homelessness cannot be an acceptable outcome to time spent in care. What percentage of care leavers exiting services are being pushed directly into emergency homeless settings because the State has failed to expand after-care entitlements? In relation to therapy services, I have raised the alarm many times about the extreme vulnerability of the youngest cohort.
The witnesses have highlighted a major surge in children under the age of 12 requiring residential care due to complex needs. How equipped are the voluntary organisations to manage those children aged under 12? What services and wraparound therapeutic resources in the State are being failed for their lack of funding for this age group?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
First, we are in an omnicrisis. That is why it is happening. There is a lack of a long-term strategic plan. We have never had one. At the beginning, Tusla shrank the number of beds it had and the voluntary services were frozen, while the number of young people requiring placement stayed the same or increased. Therefore, a vacuum was created, which for-profit services filled. Long-term planning and vision will mean that will not happen.
In respect of homelessness, I do not have a specific percentage of the number leaving from our services. Our recent youth homeless strategy, that is, the national strategy, identified care leavers as one of the cohorts most likely to end up in homelessness. Recent research from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, up to 2024 showed that care leavers accounted for one of the higher levels of new people coming into homelessness. I can forward some of that research on to the Senator.
It is not like there are floods of people in this regard. This is an achievable goal. We are talking about double digits or in the low hundreds, rather than thousands. It is completely achievable to reverse that and have a functioning system, but it needs a long-term framework rather than a constant firefighting response.
Mr. David Power:
We have children under 12 in our services. We are capable of looking after that cohort. Some of the proposals that were submitted from the voluntary providers in 2023 looked at under 12 centres. We were one such provider that submitted a proposal to look after children under 12, if needed. Ms Stewart caters to that cohort.
Ms Róisín Stewart:
St. Bernard's Children's Services started a designated service for children under the age of 12 in 1997. We have been able to sustain that service since then. We opened a second service for children under 12 in 2023. From our perspective, although we all acknowledge that fostering is the preferred placement, it is not suitable for some children. Some children are not necessarily manageable within a fostering support service due to their acute childhood experiences and trauma and the complexity of their needs and challenging behaviour. A residential placement should be viewed as an appropriate therapeutic intervention, especially when that continuity of care can be provided and where there is a good quality system that promotes structure, safety and the therapeutic relationship.
If it is decided to not go down that route, we will potentially be exposing those children to multiple placement breakdowns that could lead to ruptures-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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As a result of multiple placement breakdowns, those children do not get access to education because they are being moved from house to house.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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When they are in voluntary care, what is the position in relation to education? Do they have to go to school? Are they made to attend school or Youthreach services? Is attendance in an education setting mandatory? What is the practice in that regard?
Ms Róisín Stewart:
I can only speak from our experience. We are fortunate to have a working relationship with our local primary school. For example, let us say a child comes into our care outside of the normal academic school year. We will negotiate with the school next door around getting that child admitted and registered. If the child is not able for that, we will look at a slow integration into mainstream schooling. That could involve their accessing a small classroom setting where they get some educational hours. We promote and believe that children need to be in education. If we cannot access the local school in our area, we look at other schools in the locality that the child can attend. We promote that.
We also advocate for a structured day where children are at least getting some educational support during the school day provided by the social care staff or, if needed, additional hours of home schooling. We are fortunate to have a good relationship-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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That is the practice in St. Bernard's Children's Services. What about the other services?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The witnesses can come back to this matter in the second round.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is an important issue. I hope someone picks it up again because it is good. That does not happen, however.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am always strict on time in the first round because people have places to be. It falls to me for my questions. We will have time for a second round after that. Do we have any sense of the differences in outcomes between the not-for-profit and private sectors? As I have been listening to the conversation - I am conscious I want to phrase this correctly so that it does not sound wrong – I have been thinking about the debate between the private and not-for-profit sectors in this area. We talked earlier about childcare and how we have private care and then the community base. I am thinking about hospitals in this regard. Obviously, there was a big debate recently about maternity care. This public and private dynamic extends out to nursing homes, disability services, the public and private speech and language therapy services, dental services and even schools. However, when it comes to children in care, the big difference is that it is not the child’s choice. They are not choosing between the private and the not-for-profit service. They do not get a choice, and the State is paying for the service. This makes it fundamentally different.
In general, is "for-profit" going to be a dirty word in this sector? It feels wrong when we are saying people are coming into the country to make a profit off of our vulnerable children or people are setting up for-profit companies off the back of our children. However, do we feel that way about childcare and nursing homes? I am just wondering about this in order to get down to the nitty-gritty of the issue.
Mr. Hill mentioned that in the for-profit setting, when the child turns 18, the bed is no longer covered. I have this image of a child being turfed out and facing homelessness. Is that really happening? I cannot imagine that someone would not advocate at all for a child for whom they have been caring. I imagine the people in the for-profit sector are still caring. Do we have statistics that show the differences in outcomes? By the way, I wish to caveat this by saying I absolutely believe we should be investing in the not-for-profit sector. The State should be fully responsible for our children in care. I am just trying to tease out whether we have statistics around the outcomes and whether the outcomes in the for-profit services are terrible.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
As a State, we are not great at collecting statistics on our young people in care. I do not want to demonise anyone or any particular sector. That is not the goal. It is about the exact principle the Cathaoirleach described - the funding ends the day the person turns 18. They leave on the day they turn 18.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Does Mr. Hill know that?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Has he real-life experience of that?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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When Mr. Hill says that his organisation was put under pressure to do it-----
Mr. Gordon Hill:
The day that person turns 18, they are an adult in a home for children. We will have a waiting list and Tusla will say that he or she is 18 now and there is a 14-year-old waiting on a place. That is a reflection of the capacity crisis that has developed, particularly over the past ten years. The values are not there. The values amount to legal responsibility and what the margin is.
We have some amazing staff who have come from for-profit backgrounds. All that money just leaves the system. Anything that has been invested leaves. To go back to the point Mr. Dignan made earlier, if profit can be made off a service when the rest of us are not sure our costs are being covered, something is being missed. It is either to do with the quality of staffing, the qualifications of the people coming in or the resources going into the young people who need them. That willingness to advocate will also be less because it is not the goal or purpose of the service. The purpose is to provide a bed for a young person, whereas our purpose is to provide beds for vulnerable young people and advocate for a system that treats them better. It is not to demonise one sector, however. Ten years ago, the State and the voluntary sector amounted to 70% of the services in this area. Now, however, some 70% of the services are private.
Nobody did that on purpose. There is no policy from any Department that stated it wanted to do that. That is the drift. The lack of a long-term vision has meant that we have ended up here. It is not to demonise anybody.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
There are great people working in the private sector. As Mr. Hill said, some of them have moved into the voluntary sector as well. First, it is the principle of commodifying the care of vulnerable children. Second, it is the model. The private ones are private equity backed. They are profit driven. It is not the staff or the management. Rather, it is what the private ones have to do to ensure that profits are made. That is the system and that is how business works. A lot of research was done in the UK on the for-profit model. Our biggest cost, as any voluntary organisation's is, is salaries. The majority of our funding goes on salaries. If you want to increase profits, you have to look at salaries, because that is the biggest cost. In the UK, it has been found that the private operators reduce salaries. That means less experienced and qualified staff. That has a direct impact on the quality of care and the outcome for children. Numerous pieces of research have shown that. We are going in the very same direction. That is not a reflection on the staff in the private settings who are trying to do their best. It is the way the model works.
On the other hand, we have the capacity to bring in and retain staff because we work to an ethos or a model of care and provide the best level of care we can. Our staff buy into that, and they see the benefits and the positive outcomes. What we want to do goes back to education. We want to provide a home from home, as Mr. Hill said, where children go to school, come home, do their homework, get involved locally in their communities, in sports, etc., and build up their own peer networks. Basically, we want them to develop as children should develop and get as close to it as we can, notwithstanding the fact that a lot of these children have their own challenges, traumas and family histories, but we are trying to manage that as best we can to ensure that they fulfil their potential to the extent that they can.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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In relation to engagement, I heard the consensus on a lack of engagement with CRAVA. It was mentioned that 31 beds had been allocated but CRAVA had not received any engagement on that. How was CRAVA informed? Has it been refused engagement by the Department?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
We found out about the 31 beds when the strategy was produced and we read it. That was when we realised that 31 beds were allocated to us as voluntary providers.
In terms of engagement, we have an agreement with Tusla whereby we would meet it on a quarterly basis. We are looking at doing that. We have not had those meetings over the last 12 or 14 months and we want to re-engage with Tusla.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Why did they stop?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It refused the quarterly meetings.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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CRAVA sought dates.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Yes. Historically, we had four meetings a year. Last year, I think we had one. To date this year, we have had none. To be fair, Tusla came back to us recently to say it would give us a date later. We believe that they are critical because, effectively, the purpose of those meetings is for us to bring first-line information to Tusla, discuss our issues and challenges, support Tusla in the challenges it might have, and work in partnership together, which is the base of that. We are happy that it has a commitment and will meet that commitment. We have had a meeting with the Minister to address some of these issues, but what is lacking-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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CRAVA has had a meeting.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
We had a meeting in February with the Minister and we raised some of these issues. What is lacking is a forum. There is no joined-up piece here. We will meet with the Minister, we will meet with Tusla and Tusla will meet with the Minister, but there is no forum where everybody can come together and ask how we address this fundamental problem.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I will cut Mr. Dignan off because I am strict with everybody else, so I had better be strict with myself. We will go into a second round. Do the witnesses need a refreshment break or anything like that? They are okay.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for being here. I am not sure what I am going to ask them because what we have heard is quite bleak. They have been very articulate in what we and the Government need to do. I do not have a whole lot left. The properties owned by the witnesses are expected to meet certain standards and be suitable for children. Are they inspected regularly? Following on from that, if major works are needed, do they have any access to funding for same?
Ms Margaret Maguire:
We provide the properties for free to Tusla. Maintenance has been provided by the charities for a long time. In recent years, Tusla has provided some funding for repairs, but with ageing buildings, repairs can be great. When young people have trauma, they can cause property damage, which can vary the level of requirement of need to repair windows, doors and walls from damage. Varying levels of funding are required each year for the level of property maintenance that needs to be done. The requirements for the compliance side of things around health and safety like Legionnaire's disease, fire doors and all of that have gone through the roof and we are expected to comply, yet our funding has not changed to meet all of those requirements. That is where the squeeze is on. Every year, the value of what we receive is decreasing because of the cost of living and every other cost we are expected to meet.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Maintenance is going to become a bigger and bigger issue. To be fair, Tusla does its best where it can and it certainly helped Don Bosco with maintenance, but it does not have the funding either. Fundamentally, you have to look at what the State does. Does the State recognise, as Ms Maguire said, that all of these properties are provided free of charge to the State? There is no rent or lease on them. Tusla will support us where it can with maintenance, but it has a limited budget as well. The State needs to look at what it needs to do to support the voluntary sector appropriately. Insurance costs, which are increasing all the time, maintenance costs and our ability to increase our capital funding to purchase properties where we can support the State with increased capacity and resolve some of the issues there are all the fundamental issues that have not been addressed properly. They have not been discussed to the extent that they should have been. Tusla does its very best with a limited budget. As Mr. Hill said, we are not looking for billions of euro to address these issues effectively. It is not going to be a huge cost to the State, but it is going to be a cost to the State.
Mr. David Power:
It does not matter how big or small a provider is. Compliance is compliance. A massive organisation has to be compliant, as does a small one. The cost is still there. It is getting harder and harder to meet compliance if a provider is under-resourced, as it takes away from everything else.
Mr. Vivian Molloy:
We have just had a building assessment on our service. A ten-year plan for its maintenance and upkeep is transparent. It is going to cost €500,000 to restore and maintain the buildings as they stand, never mind what it will cost ten years from now, given inflation, the cost of building and all that sort of stuff. There is a trajectory there for us to be able to work with it, the board of management to be able to assign and designate funding, and for us to map out with the funders a way of maintaining our service.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
We have a building where we have to replace a roof. That has been assessed at between €250,000 and €500,000. I do not expect Tusla to pay that, and I do not think it would have that funding. We have to figure out how we do that. One of our properties is leased from the archdiocese. It is a fundamental thing that the church has properties that it is not using. I know that there is a to and fro between the State in terms of redress. There are models that could be used. The State and the church could agree that the church would not hand over the properties but could allow the use of properties by the State that were appropriate for care. The cost saving to the State to get those on a peppercorn rent from the church and giving them to the voluntary providers would address the issues of capacity, increasing bed numbers, closing special emergency arrangements, SEAs. There would be no huge cost there because the church would effectively be allowing the State to use the properties. It is being creative about it. We do not need to build new properties. There are enough properties around the State.
Mr. David Power:
The properties are all in the community. The growth of residential care is on the outskirts of towns, outside of communities, whereas voluntary providers are actually right in the heart of it. They are part of the local schools, football clubs and hurling clubs. The community comes around it and it becomes normal to go to school, to play with the local football or hurling club, to do drama and stuff like that. They are some of the outcomes that can be achieved but that are very hard to measure because they are normality.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
It is not just that we have to maintain our properties. We want to because we are providing a home for the children and young people we look after.
We are also providing a comfortable and safe place for our staff. It is fundamental to the child's and the staff's sense of well-being and safety that we have properties that are fit for purpose, comfortable and appropriate.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I am going to sum this up incredibly quickly. Seventy per cent of children are in private care. As good as the workforce may be, it is private capital that is making determinations on the basis of making money. At this point in time, a lot of the Children's Residential and Aftercare Voluntary Association's members are under severe pressure. Long term, if we got to the point of having a plan, and given the cost of buildings and whatever, on some level voluntary care organisations are not overly concerned once they get a building. It is not like they are looking to have a property portfolio.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I remember asking Bernard Gloster a question about disability residential services when he was still in the HSE. He told me that the best-case scenario was that the local authority would provide it and then disability service providers or, in this case, voluntary care organisations step in.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Where there is a benefit to these because alongside making money, the organisations are building up a property portfolio in a sense. I will go back to the question that I asked previously. It relates to the complexity of issues that voluntary care organisations deal with. We are talking about a system that is not fit to deal with an awful lot of that because we have lost the high-level units. How does this work out or look like in reality?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Very simply, it is a residential care system for children under 18 and under 12 that is fit for purpose. The model that St. Bernard's has is specifically for children up to 12 years of age. We need a separate residential care model for children between 12 and 18 and an appropriate and fully funded aftercare model for young people between 18 and 21 or 23. However, within that, the mainstream residential model cannot be one-size-fits-all. A child with complex needs cannot be put in a residential house with three other children who are basically-----
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is 100% and that is what we want. We do not have it at the minute.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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How is that working out? We see how that is working out in what we see sometimes in the public domain. It is the use of special emergency arrangements, SEAs, and all the rest of it.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
That is a long-term plan. We will not do it tomorrow, but it is doable. If it is built on year on year by providing the proper capital, an overall plan that people are working towards and metrics that are measured year on year to examine if progress is being made in the right direction versus the number of kids in care and the needs identified, then it is very doable. The plan has to be built, however.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
The plan must have equitable reach and distribution. Historically speaking, there has been no care in the west of Ireland between Galway and Donegal. We want to keep children as close as possible to their social networks and families, etc. They should not have to move from Donegal to Dublin to get care. We need a plan that takes account of all that, so children stay within their communities and get the care they need at the time they need it. Children will move out of care and stabilise. They might move into foster care or, hopefully, move back with their families. That is what the aim is all the time, but we have got to have a system that supports that.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Exactly. It is all about that. It is the reviewing of-----
Mr. David Power:
Regarding the plan, it is about specialisation rather than standardisation. If we look at the specialisation of services, St. Bernard’s Children's Services and Smyly Trust Services are based on a therapeutic model that is built around attachment. We want the adults who stay to have a greater understanding, so the child attaches and can then repair.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The organisations have to do a hell of a lot of work with some of the children.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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There has been a consistency to everything the witnesses have said. On some level, it is hardly shocking unfortunately. I imagine the conversations that come up with Tusla is accepting Tusla is not having meetings with voluntary care organisations because it can offer nothing other than what the organisations already know. However, it is a different conversation that the witnesses are having with the Minister. Where is that going?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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What did the Minister say?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
We have been referencing the current framework. We have not seen the new framework yet, but we are hoping that it has been built on the ombudsman's report. We hope that the inputs we got to make were not too many. The Department has an ambitious timeline, and we are looking forward to seeing the first draft when it comes, but it needs to be a long-term strategic plan with resources and metrics built into it to ensure that it is working. We will not know until we see it.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Without second-guessing it, what struck us was that there was a short-term action plan and a long-term vision, but you need a strategy to achieve a vision. You also need funding to get there. There was no mention of a budget, money or a strategic plan. Every organisation has its vision on its website. The vision is based on the ideal world. We may never reach that but we must have a plan to try to get us as close to it as we can. When this framework is developed, we hope there will be a strategic plan that is fully costed and realistic in terms of what can be achieved. There has to be a realistic timeline as well because, as I said and we all agreed, to achieve a system that is fit for purpose, it could take 10, 15 or 20 years, but it is worth doing. The earlier we start it, the earlier we will get there but we must have a commitment from the State to fulfil its duty of care to these children.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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You have had promises but it is a plan with money.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is horrifying to think that it could take 20 years and of all the children who will be missed in that time. To tell the truth, it is quite horrifying. Tusla is failing a lot of these children and only for the voluntary and the for-profit sectors, I hate to think where we would be today. I do not like the for-profit sector at all. There is one particular house in my area where-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Do not name the centre, Senator.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is in my area and the children constantly go missing from it. It is in a residential area and the children constantly go missing from this particular house. That is why I am curious about the importance of staff continuity, the services provided and the relationships made with those children who come into residential units, as well as the importance of trying to get children into education. Children who go from house to house are sometimes not in education for up to two years and that is shocking. These children are 12, 13, 14 years of age and they have missed out on two years of education. They cannot get a placement and have to go somewhere. They are maybe going into the for-profit or voluntary sector. The service providers then have to deal with that child who does not have the capacity other children of the same age have and has to go back on their educational pathway.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
That is a good point and a good example of why this is a cross-departmental issue. There is a lady named Tara, and I apologise that I am blanking on her surname, who did a piece of research on that. The idea is that if a young person is being moved, there should be a link from the Department of education that makes sure when the child moves, they land and have an education placement. What happens in reality is they move to us and then we start to try to find a local school or Youthreach and, the Deputy is right, time builds up. We do not have that structure so that when someone in care is moved, a place is identified and established immediately because it is urgent.
Ms Róisín Stewart:
One of the biggest failings is the fact that there is a child, who is potentially in a school and has a wraparound service to make that school placement work in terms of support hours and SNA support, but when they come into us all of that is gone. We have to reapply for everything and therefore sometimes local schools are reluctant. They are managing their numbers and have their own demands. We are asking for a child to be admitted who, unfortunately, will not have the support hours until it is reapplied for, which could be in the next academic year. That is tough, yet that support and wraparound is just sustaining that placement for that child. That is a fundamental flaw that should be addressed.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I agree with Mr. Dignan there.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is under-resourced-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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-----and it does not have the staff, and that is not its fault.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is just the system that is in there at this moment-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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-----does not work.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Absolutely. It is shocking.
Mr. David Power:
It is really unfortunate that we are talking about a long-term plan but find ourselves in a situation where, while we might talk about a long-term plan, we may not be here for it. That is critical. When we talk about sustainability, long-term planning and all the challenges we face now, if we do not get the first step right in sustaining the voluntary providers, the plan will be very-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I am an advocate of the English model, the local authority model. Bringing it back down to basics and back down to community is where this childcare should be. That is the model I would like to see in this country. It is the only model that will work, whereby children are kept within their own county, within their own community.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Honest to God, I-----
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Just one thing based on what the Senator said: as regards the first part of the alternative care framework in the programme for Government, short-term actions to address the current crisis, part of those short-term actions is sustainability of the voluntary sector. It is very short term for us. As Mr. Power said, we and others may not be around too much longer unless the Government steps in to provide a proper source of funding, both capital funding and the full cost of our service plus cost recovery, because that is a short-term action for us. As Mr. Power said, we would love to say that we will work with all the stakeholders over the next 20 years. We will if we are still in existence, but some of us may not be.
Ms Róisín Stewart:
Mr. Power's organisation has been around since the 1800s; mine has been around for 50 years. We would love to be around for another 50. The difficulty at the minute is that the biggest demand on us as a service is trying to recruit staff. The negative impact from being removed from the Department of Health social care salary scales has made it quite challenging for us to recruit staff the way we used to do. The uncertainty that has been added to the fact that potentially our pensions are being reviewed and our eligibility for the pension scheme, again, is making it challenging for us to recruit because the fundamental questions anybody would ask, as a new candidate interested in employment, would be, "What is your salary scale?" and "What is your pension scheme?", and we are having to say, "Well, we were a part of the Department of Health, we are now in an adopted WRC salary scale situation, and we hope to be able to offer you a pension but, again, that is not certain." That does not help.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Just to clarify that, I think when people look at this, generally they say the State or Tusla is having difficulties in recruiting staff and we are. It is not the same. Our challenges are based predominantly around paying pensions. For the State and other organisations, that is not the issue.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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We have kind of touched on this already. As has been noted, where would we be if we did not have the commercial operators? In terms of the choices the State is making, given that CRAVA's statement recognises, and we all recognise, the historical deficit in planning and investment and the surge in recent years, is there a sense that it is felt that commercial operators can respond more quickly or more flexibly?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
Effectively, it is the commercial operator's ability to respond quickly and be flexible. A private provider can purchase a property quite quickly and turn it around because it has the equity backing to do that. We would like to do that but we cannot because we have absolutely no funding. One of the things that have been particular to the private sector has been the ability to respond quickly because it is backed by private equity, the money is there, the finance is there and the private operators can scale up. The downside of-----
Mr. Gordon Hill:
Ultimately, though, to be clear, a lot of that quick response was for what we now call SEAs. Because the capacity was allowed to dwindle down to a low level, that seems much more positive than it actually is. That is actually a negative consequence of previous policy decisions that have meant we have moved backwards in time and have-----
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That was about recognising that the family setting was superior.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, but what was the basis for that decision?
Ms Róisín Stewart:
In and around 2013 or 2014, it was decided to reduce the number of residential services. The meitheal model and the preventative family support, PPFS, came in. The belief was that if we can get them at level 1 or level 2 before they get to a high crisis, we should not need residential services. We had three residential services in 2012; we went down to one because they closed two of our services. Residential was deemed as no longer needed because they were going to be able to put community-based services in situ to help these families not get into crisis.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That is a noble policy perspective, I would say.
Ms Margaret Maguire:
It is a noble thing, but the reality is that there will always be children who will need residential care. It is a therapeutic intervention. It is not just the last resort, and that is where the focus needs to be. It is a planned intervention. We are a child and family service so we do a lot of work with families and we have worked really hard to get young people back to live with their families. That is always part of our questioning when they move in: when they can move home, or whether it is safe to move home. That should be the focus, whereas they are in residential care for this period of time. Whether they want to move on to a foster family, whether they will move on to an aftercare placement or back to the family, that should be part of it. It is a planned intervention, not a last resort. That needs to be a shift.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
To come back to Deputy Connolly's point, the other fundamental there is that the profit-driven model is driven by profit. There is a clue in the name. When profits drop, there is always the potential that they will leave the market because the profit is not there. If a for-profit decides that it is losing profit here, that it is not making it and that it will do its business somewhere else, where do those children go?
As regards the core benefits, the voluntary services have been around, as Ms Stewart says, since the mid-19th century. We are always going to be there. Maybe it is to our detriment that the State feels that we will always be there, that it can rely on us and that, whatever it gives us, we will stay around. That is not true either. I know it was a concern with the Government in recent years, and it has been seen in the UK, that for-profits can come into the market very quickly to make a profit and can exit just as quickly if they are not making a profit.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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To come back to that point about the flexibility of the commercial sector, they have equity and they can purchase properties at quick decisions. They are not grant aided by the State for those purchases, though.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The funding they get is purely for the current costs of operating the services.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
One thing that was seen in the UK is that they do leverage significant debt. That is one thing that is particular to the private market, that they leverage a lot of debt to purchase properties. In addition, they have to pay dividends to the stakeholders, so their model is very different in that way. As with all entities backed with hedge fund private equity, that is one of the issues, that they are quite heavily in debt in the UK. That has been seen. There have been no surveys or analysis done of the market here that we know of.
Ms Róisín Stewart:
The other thing, though, is that we should not underestimate the flexibility of the voluntary sector. Obviously, we would need funding to do it. If I think again of my own service, gosh, over the past 50 years we have provided short-term emergency, emergency, respite, and long-term and medium-term care. We now have our high-support care for under-12s. We provided aftercare at one point and disability care. We meet the demand that is faced-----
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Just on that very question, if you recognise in a particular part of the country that there is a demand and you want to meet that demand, how do you start financing the purchase of a property?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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But approved housing bodies have access to CALF funding and CAS funding. Can you do that?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Neither of those sources are available to-----
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Ms Maguire's organisation looked to the Department of children for that.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Not the Department of housing.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
If Tusla or the Department of housing came to my organisation and said it had a house it felt would be suitable and could provide to us along with whatever small amount of funding is needed to upgrade it, we could recruit the staff to basically care for the four children in that. That is how flexible we can be. Our flexibility is not an inability due to the structure of the organisation; it is based on a lack of money to do it.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It falls to me to ask the final questions. I am conscious I cut Mr. Dignan off quite a bit during both rounds, so I will give him some time if he wants to summarise or if there is anything in particular he wants to get across before we finish.
Going back to for-profit versus not-for-profit, the witnesses have all spoken passionately about creating a home and the services they want to provide to continuing care even after funding ceases. Mr. Dignam spoke about upgrading buildings not because his organisation has to but because it wants to. One of the members of the secretariat and I were in Ohio where we visited a short-term care setting called Huckleberry House. The way it was laid out internally was beautiful. It really was a home from home in a short-term way. What does the home from home look like to the organisations? What is leading my question is that we have just published our report on child poverty and deprivation and one of the things the children spoke about - Senator Keogan has also encouraged this idea - was an activity card to allow the children to access music, arts, sport, leisure and extracurricular activities. What does a home from home look and feel like? Do children get access to those activities?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
It looks like a home. Ours has a front room, a kitchen and bedrooms. Some of the houses are slightly bigger and might have a games room. Some are just houses in the community. The difference is there is probably a staff office, which would not be in a normal house. When houses are run well they are done with the young people. They could be sitting in house meetings so we can find out what kind of activities they are interested in as a group or individually and find hobbies and interests. As Mr. Power mentioned earlier, maybe they are in the local GAA or are into drama. It should feel more like a home than a youth club, for example. We have run youth clubs too but the structure of it is that it is the place where they live, not a service they are in.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Do they have their own room?
Mr. David Power:
We have a young person with us who is playing rugby in the local community. She has been on two trips, one to Portugal and one to Spain, to play in tournaments. This is a young person who had severe trauma as a young child and now feels part of a family and a community. She is getting ready to leave and we are seeing some of the trauma starting to come back because she is anxious as she does not know what is going to happen.
Ms Margaret Maguire:
We involve the young people in the day-to-day running, like choosing the menu and helping with the shopping. It is very family-based. When you tell people we are based here and they say they never knew we existed, I think that is great. It means we look like everyone else and do not stand out in the community. We try to blend in so the kids do not feel stigmatised because they live in residential care. Their friends can come in. We wish they would do more, sometimes, because they are reluctant to join groups but they are-----
Mr. Terry Dignan:
When it is working really well any child who is in care would go to school and no child in that class would know that child was in care. They have their house to go back to with their own room. It is their own personal space. They decorate it as they wish. They are involved, as Ms Maguire said, in planning the day and cooking. They are involved in local clubs, etc. Effectively, they are living their life as a child. As Mr. Hill said, the only difference is there are professional staff in the parenting role there.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
The Cathaoirleach's initial question struck me and it is still playing in my mind. I mean the difference between childcare and nursing homes she spoke about. My kids went to a private crèche. It cost me more than my flipping mortgage. The difference is they were my kids so if there was something wrong, they would tell me about it and I would address it. I have had elderly relatives in nursing homes and they have family around them. A child in care does not have that. Some might, but often they do not, so the values of the place the State is paying for them to be in are much more important than when your own kid is going to crèche because you will keep an eye on what is happening there and you will know how they feel when they come home. You will have a sense of how they are treated when they are there. That is missing for kids in care so it is probably more important that we have a values-led version and we do not commodify our children who are in need of State care.
Mr. David Power:
A lot of our models of care are based around values, not around rules. We know these children struggle with rules so it is all values. We talk about trust and the building of trust. It is attaching to adults who care for you so you feel safe. That is the work. If you have the same adults coming in over and over again, as we do, then the work is successful and that leads to positive outcomes. That is the kid going to college and the kid going to work. At one stage we had four of our children working in Croke Park. They saw every concert for two years.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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And the football matches as well, I hope.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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With regard to the activity card the committee has recommended, let us say some of the young persons are travelling abroad for sport. How would that activity card benefit those children and what would the best activity card look like?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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When the kids were in here they spoke about not being able to take part in the same activities as their peers, be that piano, soccer or going to concerts.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am asking if the State was to provide an activity card, what should it look like?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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How does that work? If I give a teenager €200, how do I know they are going to spend it on piano and soccer and not a vape? We have to understand how it would go to extracurricular activities.
Mr. Gordon Hill:
The key worker will have sat down with them. We do not actually hand the young person the cash. It is like what I would do with my teenager if she wanted to join the swimming club. I did not hand her the money. I went over, we signed her up and she is doing the lessons. It is more like a parenting model than-----
Mr. Terry Dignan:
They are dropped off to football matches and training and they are picked up by staff. When they have to pay something staff will pay it. Where we know they are capable, they will have their own pocket money and they can do what they like with that. It is to give them the ability to socialise, to become independent and to become self-reliant.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We are coming to the end. Did Senator Murphy O'Mahony want to come in on the second round?
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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Yes. I did not get in on any round yet.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We are at the very end, so-----
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I apologise for coming in and out of the meeting. I had to go back to the Seanad.
I thank all the witnesses for coming in and for the work they do. I assume at this stage most of the questions I had have been asked. I will talk to my colleagues about the replies. I want to raise one issue before we finish, namely, aftercare. When a young person leaves care there is often what is perceived to be a cliff edge. They are getting the care and then there is nothing. What specific reforms are needed to ensure people leaving care do not face this cliff edge?
Mr. Gordon Hill:
To summarise, there are a couple of other things. The entitlement to aftercare should be based on the need of the young person, not some time-bound measurement of their time in care, as often kids are known to Tusla a lot more than they are actually in care. We have a young person who is in care who said aftercare sounds like you have stopped caring, so a better phrase, perhaps through-care, continuous care or something like that, is required. Aftercare should match up with our national youth policy age, meaning the young person should not be cut off at the age of 21 or 23. Ireland's national youth policies go to 25 and 26. Young people who have experienced a lot of trauma and have much fewer supports need a little more than what we are designing elsewhere. We have proposals we will happily share on the current review of the Child Care Act that looks at some of this stuff too.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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Is it different for everyone? Is it specific to the person?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
It is individual, yes. Under the current system, as Mr. Hill said, the cut-off age is 21 if you are not in education or training and 23 if you are. A lot of young people are not capable of engaging in education or training so we have to make allowances for that. Why should you be cut off at 21 because you are not in education or training? A lot of our own children do not choose education or training after 18 but they do not have to leave home. As Mr. Hill said, on a case-by-case basis, some young people need supports for longer. We have an outreach aftercare service in Don Bosco. These are young people who have aged out of aftercare but we still provide support within the community they are living in.
That will help them with their basic day-to-day needs such as filling in forms, job interviews and preparation for those in training. The cliff edge is the issue. We need to provide care on a needs basis beyond the ages of 21 and 23, where we can.
Mr. David Power:
When you talk about the cliff edge, it is actually very scary for both the carer and the young adults under their care. We have been there when the plans have not been properly figured out. There are then struggles, such as the kid not knowing where he is going and there is anxiety for both the carer and the child. The question is what the next stage is and where they are going. That is a basic right.
Ms Margaret Maguire:
We have had young people who have successfully gone home before the age of 18. By the time they turn 21, things may not have worked out so they may come back and ask what they should do then. They are nearly punished for successfully moving home and there are then no supports because they have managed to survive at home until they are 21. The relationship may have broken down and they may find themselves facing homelessness. That is a real difficulty for kids by whom we have done the right thing by getting them home. They have done the right thing and maintained it, but the cut-off point means there is no support.
Mr. Terry Dignan:
I might just make one point. I know this is very obvious so it is not probably not worth saying, but we need to think about the cost to the State where we have failed children in care. In terms of mental health issues, addiction issues, the criminal justice system and homelessness, the cost is incomparably bigger than what it would cost to keep them in care and actually help them to develop and live independently. When a child goes into homelessness and might engage with addiction services, mental health services or the criminal justice system, the State pays multiples of what it would have cost to ensure that child had a proper care experience, in both residential care and aftercare. We often forget that.
Ms Róisín Stewart:
I know it is not related to aftercare but we run a fostering support service. The focus of that is to try to sustain placements and keep young people in foster care. If that placement fails, the expenses related to that child may increase as they will potentially end up in residential care at a significant cost to the State. At the minute, the fostering support service, which we have offered for the past 11 years, is earmarked for closure. It is being reviewed to determine the cost efficiency of it. It consists of a small team of staff who have been providing fostering support to foster carers in south Tipperary, Carlow and Kilkenny for the past 11 years.
Obviously, there are significant concerns among the foster cares at the minute. They are wondering where, if that service goes, they will get the support. At this time, they are indicating they do not necessarily trust that that support will be available under the current delivery and provision of service within Tusla. It is a concern. Our belief is that we will possibly have placement breakdowns and that young people will again end up having to come into the residential care setting as a result. That could be avoided if appropriate support is provided to foster carers.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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It is hugely important. It is also important that planning start early and that we do not wait until the person turns a certain age.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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We know they will turn that age years before it happens, so we should start early. It is very important to think of the carer as well. We often just think of the person who is looked after but it obviously pulls at the carer's heartstrings as well. I thank the Cathaoirleach and I thank the witnesses for the great work they do.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator. She is double-jobbing everywhere today so I thank her for coming back to us. Is there anything Mr. Dignan would like to say in the two minutes remaining?
Mr. Terry Dignan:
I will just reiterate the key issues. We need to develop a system that provides the appropriate care for every child at an appropriate time. That takes planning and investment, which has been singularly lacking on behalf of the State over the past two, three or four decades. We really need to take it seriously now. If we act collectively now, we can develop, as Mr. Hill said, a system that will not cost the earth but will save lives, effectively. It will certainly enhance the life of every child and young person going through the care system. That is a particular court of young people because it is the only cohort where the State is the parent. The State has to act as a prudent parent and meet its duty of care. That takes planning, appropriate investment and a system that takes account of the needs of every child and young person going through the care system. We feel that is achievable. We simply need to sit together and begin to plan how we do that. That is notwithstanding the fact we know the Government has a plan in place, and we will await the outcome of that. However, we need a fundamental review of our system to see what the systemic failures are. That would be fundamental to any plan.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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On behalf of the committee, I thank the witnesses for coming in, not least given the volume of work they are doing on a daily basis. They are working extremely hard for the benefit of our most vulnerable children and adults. I think the witnesses can see across the board that we are all extremely passionate about these vulnerable children. We will all work on a cross-party basis to make a positive change.