Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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670. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans in terms of training and support to ensure full implementation of the Children First Act 2015. [6949/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Since the Children First Act 2015 was signed into law on 19 November 2015, a number of provisions of the Act have already been commenced as follows: Sections 1 to 5 (Part I) and section 28 (Part V) of the Act were commenced on 10 December 2015 and Section 18 (Part III) and Sections 20-26 (Part IV) were commenced on 1 May 2016. I have recently committed to commencement of the remaining provisions of the Act by end 2017.

In preparation for the commencement of the remaining provisions of the Act, my Department and Tusla are in the process of developing a suite of resources to support the full implementation of the Act. This includes the revision by my Department of the Children First: National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children and the preparation by Tusla of guidance documents in relation to child safeguarding statements and mandated assisting. In addition, Tusla is developing a comprehensive Children First e-training module which will be universally available free of charge and will set out the information required to recognise and report child welfare and protection concerns.

It is intended that this suite of resources will be launched prior to the commencement date to give persons and organisations who will acquire legal obligations under the Act sufficient time to familiarise themselves with the resources.