Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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42. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the timeline for the implementation of the commitment in the programme for Government for development of in-house therapeutic services within Tusla. [22368/20]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Tusla’s local area teams provide a range of therapeutic interventions and supports through directly employed Tusla staff. In addition, Tusla provides grant aid to community and voluntary agencies for the provision of a wide range of family support services including specific funding for counselling services.

Therapeutic and assessment services are also delivered through the specialised Tusla Assessment, Consultation and Therapy Service (ACTS) aligned to each region’s Special Care Units and Oberstown Youth Detention Unit. ACTS is a multidisciplinary team with a Clinical Team Manager and includes the disciplines of psychology, speech and language therapy, addiction counselling, social work and social care. The ACTS service is continuing to develop a community service for young people at risk of detention and special care. This model has already been rolled out in some Tusla regions.

Tusla funds a trainee Psychology programme to build capacity within the Agency . Currently 13 trainee psychologists are being funded. Five of these trainees are due to complete their studies shortly and will be offered posts in September 2020 aligned to local Tusla children in care teams.

Tusla is currently focussing on achieving consistent therapeutic service design and delivery across all regions. In this regard the in-house therapeutic model has been developed which supports and informs front line practitioners in their day to day work with children and families as well as providing multidisciplinary therapeutic services which can address more complex needs.

My officials will engage with Tusla to explore how best this model can be further developed as part of Tusla's service response for children and young people. This will be done having regard to the provision of related services offered by other state agencies and in the context of resource considerations.