North Dublin’s foster care services require “significant improvements” to ensure children are protected from abuse, the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) has warned.
A lack of foster care placements, staffing vacancies and difficulties using the Child and Family Agency’s (Tusla) case management system were highlighted in the inspection of the Dublin North area fostering services, carried out in late August 2024.
In one case, inspectors found four children were placed with foster carers with whom they were related but had “no pre-existing relationship”. These relative foster carers had not been assessed as general foster carers when the children were placed with them, and the placement was “made as a last resort”, the Hiqa inspector found.
The “national shortage of foster carers” meant 21 children in Dublin North were awaiting a full-time foster care placement, while 48 children were awaiting approval of long-term placements, inspectors found. It was also becoming “increasingly difficult to find placements for children with complex needs”, they noted.
While priority is given to relative foster carers, less than 40 per cent of children are actually placed with relatives, said Hiqa.
One Dublin North placement “had a particularly high number of unrelated children placed together” in order to meet the short-term needs of these children.
One allegation made by a child about a foster carer in the district was “deemed to meet the threshold of abuse” and was referred on for assessment and notified to An Garda Síochána, Hiqa also reported.
Some 21 children in Dublin North foster care did not have a professionally qualified social worker allocated to them, in line with national standards, because of staff vacancies in the area, it wrote.
A high number of children’s files were “not being updated in a timely way” which meant important information about children’s safety could be missed, warned inspectors.
Frontline staff and senior management for North Dublin told Hiqa inspectors that caseloads were “sometimes unmanageable” and case records also required “significant improvement”. Data initially provided to inspectors showed no children had gone missing from foster care in the previous 12 months. However, inspectors later found a record of a child reported missing in July 2024.
Despite these challenges, the Dublin North service area was “committed to providing a child-centred foster care service that protected and promoted children’s rights and supported children to achieve their potential”, said the report.
An inspection of foster care services in the Galway/Roscommon area in early August 2024 also warned of an “inadequate pool of foster carers” to meet the diverse needs of children in the area. It noted a decrease in the number of foster carer households in the area when compared with 2023.
At the time of inspection, 28 children were awaiting a foster care placement and 19 were awaiting full-time foster care.
Inspectors escalated one case after discovering the Garda vetting of the foster carer and adult members of their household still had not been completed six months after a child arrived on an emergency basis.
The renewal of Garda vetting was overdue in nearly one-quarter of foster care households (43 households) – in one house the renewal was overdue by 17 months, while in another, an adult member of the household had not been vetted in three years.
“Garda vetting renewal is a crucial safeguarding mechanism for children in foster care,” noted the report. “It provides ongoing protection against potential risks ensuring that the children are consistently cared for by carers who remain trustworthy and safe.”
However, inspectors added that the majority of children in the Galway/Roscommon area “were appropriately matched with foster carers who were capable and experienced in meeting their assessed needs”.
