The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has today published an inspection report on the Child and Family Agency’s (Tusla’s) foster care service in the Carlow Kilkenny South Tipperary service area.

HIQA conducted an inspection of the foster care service in Carlow Kilkenny South Tipperary service area between 21 and 24 July 2025. The inspection examined the progress made since the previous inspection in February 2024. It focused on the allocation of social workers to children in foster care and the care planning process, including the participation of children and their family in the preparation of the child’s care plan and child-in-care reviews. The inspection also assessed how children are protected and safeguarded from abuse and how the governance and management structures support the delivery of a consistent, high-quality, safe and effective foster care service.

Of the five national standards assessed, HIQA found two standards were substantially compliant and three were not compliant. Overall, HIQA found that the capacity of the service to provide a quality, safe and effective foster care service had not improved since the previous inspection. There were governance and management arrangements in place; however, the oversight and quality assurance systems were not robust and did not identify all risks relating to children in the foster care service. There was an ongoing deficit in the children-in-care workforce capacity and this had negatively impacted on the quality of care provided to some of the children in foster care.

HIQA found that a large proportion of children were not allocated to a social worker. Instead, they had an ‘allocated worker’ such as a social care worker or social care leader, and there were a number of children who had no allocated worker to coordinate their care. In addition to this, a number of children and foster carers were dual unallocated, meaning that neither the children nor foster carers had social workers allocated to them. Although managers were proactive and had attempted to mitigate risks associated with children without any allocated worker, such systems were in their infancy at the time of the inspection.

Systems in place for the management of concerns and allegations against foster carers required significant improvement to ensure adherence to Children First: National Guidance on the Protection and Welfare of Children (2017). Safeguarding practices needed to be strengthened to ensure there are no dual unallocated cases and that there is consistency with regard to workers being allocated to children in foster care. 

Care plans and review records reflected the assessment of children’s care needs and they were updated in line with statutory requirements for the majority of children. However, further improvement was required to ensure that placement plans were updated, the outcomes of review meetings were discussed with children and parents in a timely manner, and a review of the platform used for review meetings was required to ensure meaningful engagement of children.

The service area had a local service improvement plan in place that set out its key priorities and actions. Appropriate systems were in place to monitor the progress of the service improvement plan, and managers were aware of and trying to address the gaps in meeting the needs of children. For the most part, practices were in line with local standard operating procedures; however, improvement was required with regard to the consistent adherence to these procedures. In addition, the majority of the procedures and guidance documents had not been reviewed and updated within the specified time frames. Further to this, staff supervision and caseload management for social care staff required improvement.                                                    

Following the inspection, HIQA escalated eight individual cases and sought assurances in respect to safeguarding practices, oversight of case management, dual unallocated cases and the capacity of the service to ensure all children have an allocated social worker and children are visited in line with the regulations. The service provided satisfactory assurances to HIQA in respect of these escalations after the inspection.

Note:

• HIQA is authorised by the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality 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 and to report on its findings to the Minister. HIQA monitors the performance of Tusla against the National Standards for Foster Care (2003) and advises the Minister and Tusla.