Big gaps in foster care services criticised
The country’s foster care services are still fragmented, with inconsistent practice, ineffective use of resources and duplication of work, according to a new report by health watchdog Hiqa.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIiqa) published an overview report on inspections in the Child and Family Agency’s (Tusla’s) foster care services for 2017-2018 as well as four regional follow-up inspections of foster care services.
The report looked at all service area inspections conducted over the past two years and said there was “mixed levels of compliance with the National Standards for Foster Care across all 17 service areas”.
According to the report: “12 out of 17 service areas were found to be in major non-compliance with the safeguarding and child protection standard.
While a number of these service areas had elements of good safeguarding practice, the findings of major noncompliance related to circumstances that presented a risk to children.”
Shortcomings included an insufficient number of safeguarding visits by social workers to unallocated foster carers and delays in completing initial assessments where allegations had been made.
Elsewhere, seven of the 17 service areas did not provide an acceptable level of support and supervision to foster carers and were found to be in major non-compliance with the standard and only four service areas had ensured all foster carers had an allocated social worker.
In 14 areas there was an insufficient number of foster carers to meet the needs of children in care and the report also found that 14 of the 17 service areas had a backlog of foster carer reviews. In four areas, at least eight out of every 10 foster care households had not had a review in over three years.
Staff in 13 service areas told inspectors that there was a shortage of suitable placements for children in their area.
Follow-up reviews found “many service areas had made significant improvements to address the findings of the 2017 inspections” but it added: “While inspectors saw these improvements, many were too early in their implementation to assess their sustainability.”
Overall Hiqa found “a lack of consistent practices and shared learning within and between regions”, where individual initiatives that were effective in one area were not being transferred to other areas, which it called “a missed opportunity”.
It also said that Tusla’s resources were not effectively used and duplication of work was taking place.
Tusla has stressed the difficulties it has faced in the recruitment and retention of frontline staff, but Hiqa said while it accepted this, “it is essential that Tusla review operational practices and optimise staffing resources to prevent duplication of effort and inconsistency in practice”. “
In response, Tusla chief operations officer Jim Gibson said Hiqa had acknowledged that headway had been made, although he accepted there were areas where improvements needed to be made.
Patricia Finlay, service director and national lead for foster care, Tusla, said a number of successful regional pilot projects were being rolled out nationally, including an out-of-hours support service for foster carers and specialised foster care training programmes in attachment disorders.
