The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has today published two inspection reports on foster care services. The reports refer to services operated by the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) in the Dublin South East/Wicklow and the Louth/Meath service areas.

HIQA is authorised by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs under Section 69 of the Child Care Act, 1991, as amended by Section 26 of the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2011, to inspect foster care services provided by Tusla, to report on its findings to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and to inspect services taking care of a child on behalf of Tusla, including non-statutory providers of foster care. HIQA monitors foster care services against the 2003 National Standards for Foster Care.

As part of the 2017 monitoring programme, HIQA is conducting thematic inspections across 17 Tusla service areas which focus on the recruitment, assessment, approval, supervision and review of foster carers. These thematic inspections are announced and will cover eight standards relating to this theme.

Of the eight standards assessed in the inspection of the Dublin South East/Wicklow foster care service, six were found to be non-compliant, one of which was judged to be majorly non-compliant.

Foster carers received a high level of support from link workers (social workers), with frequent visits and telephone calls. Good practice was also found in relation to assessments of general foster carers; however, there were often long delays in the completion of assessments of relative carers. Furthermore, there were insufficient foster carers in the area to meet the demands of the service, which at times resulted in more children being placed with carers than recommended. The foster care committee in the area was not fully compliant with national policy and improvements were required in relation to the tracking of notifications following allegations of abuse against foster carers.

The major non-compliance related to the fact that 188 (84%) of foster carers had not had a review in over three years, while some carers had not had any reviews at all. This meant that the service could not ensure that foster carers had the continuing capacity to provide safe care. Garda vetting had not been updated and foster carers’ performance, training needs and support requirements had also not been reviewed.

In relation to the Louth/Meath foster care service, one standard was fully compliant, six were substantially compliant while one standard relating to reviews of foster carers was judged to be at the level of major non-compliance. Inspectors found that over 100 (50%) of foster carers in the area had not had a review in more than three years. The absence of reviews for such a high number of carers meant that key activities, such as updating Garda vetting, had not been completed for a significant number of foster carers.

Good quality assessments of both relative and general foster carers were being carried out, though not always within the 16 week timeframe. In addition, 6% of foster carers in the area had not been allocated a link worker and more needed to be done to ensure that these carers received adequate support and supervision. Furthermore, the area did not have sufficient foster carers to meet its needs.

Both the Dublin South East/Wicklow and Louth/Meath service areas have provided action plan responses to address the non-compliances identified on inspection which contain timelines for implementing these actions.