The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has today published an inspection report on foster care services operated by the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) in the Dublin South West, Kildare, West Wicklow service area.

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 2017/2018 monitoring programme, HIQA is conducting thematic inspections across all 17 Tusla service areas focusing on the recruitment, assessment, approval, supervision and review of foster carers. These thematic inspections are announced and cover eight standards relating to this theme.

The inspection found that the Dublin South West, Kildare, West Wicklow service area did not have enough social workers and social work team leaders in place to deliver the fostering service. The service did not demonstrate that oversight by the fostering management team effectively managed the risk associated with what are ongoing staffing issues. In addition, the area did not have a sufficient number of foster carers to meet the demand for services.

Action was taken to protect children in the care of foster carers where reports of child protection concerns, allegations or serious concerns had been made against foster carers. Safety planning was of good quality. However, the governance arrangements for the oversight of allegations and serious concerns were not effective as issues such as delays setting up strategy meetings, incorrect categorisation of reports and disproportionate responses to reports had not been identified and rectified.

Not all foster carers had An Garda Síochána (police) vetting. Additionally, the system in place to ensure up-to-date Garda vetting for foster carers and people over the age of 16 who were living in the foster care households was not robust.

Good practice was found in relation to assessments of both general and relative foster carers, but there were significant delays in completing relative foster care assessments and the procedures in place to ensure that emergency placements with relative foster carers were safe and appropriate were not robust. The governance arrangements to ensure relative foster care assessments were allocated and assessed in a timely manner was not effective.

There was no overall system in place to ensure appropriate safeguarding for foster carers without an allocated link worker. Of the 298 foster carers, 73 (24%) had no allocated link worker. Of these 73 foster carers, 14 were classified as dual unallocated, which meant that children in care in a foster care placement did not have an allocated social worker and the foster carers also did not have an allocated link worker. The quality of supervision and support for foster carers without an allocated link work was poor. However, supports were in place for foster carers caring for children with complex needs, and the supports for foster carers where placements were at risk of disruption were good. Similar to other Tusla service areas, there was no dedicated out-of-hours service to support foster carers outside of office hours.

Where reviews were completed, they were of good quality. However, 189 (63%) of the 298 foster carers had not had a review for more than three years. 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 not been reviewed.

The foster care committee covered two Tusla service areas and had oversight of 700–800 foster carers between the two areas. The committee did not have the capacity to undertake all the functions outlined in the national policy, procedure and best practice guidance on foster care committees.

The service area has provided an action plan response, with implementation timelines, to address the non-compliances identified on inspection.