Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy's points are well made. I recently discussed with Mr. Gordon Jeyes, chief executive officer designate of the child and family agency, whether the foster carer recruitment campaigns should be taken out of local areas and conducted instead on a nationwide basis. There is a real difficulty for social work teams who are under pressure dealing with referrals on a daily basis to have the time to manage a recruitment campaign effectively and conduct the necessary follow-up. My own view is that we need to take a different approach. The pressures on social worker teams are very real but, at the same time, we need to recruit more foster parents if we are to take the type of preventative approach to which the Deputy alluded. It is time to look at a new initiative in regard to how fostering campaigns are handled by the Health Service Executive and, in due course, the new child and family agency. As I said, I have had preliminary discussions with the CEO designate in this regard.

The Health and Information Quality Authority reports throughout the country are clarifying how different teams are dealing with these issues. It is clear that some are managing better than others. The report for Mayo, for example, which was published some weeks ago, found that due to limited social work resources, a decision was made by managers not to undertake child in care reviews and required reviews of foster carers within the regulatory timeframe. I was informed today that when an external consultant was brought in and the work was actually done, not one child was removed from the foster carers who were not previously examined. This is a good story in that it shows that even in an instance where HIQA highlighted concerns because a decision was taken to defer reviews, when those reviews were done the results were satisfactory and met the required standard. That is not, however, to take from the importance of meeting the necessary oversight requirements.

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