A child in Tusla’s foster care service was not visited by a social worker for over three years, a damning report has revealed.
The inspection review by the Health Information and Quality Authority has also shown there were at least 63 children in foster care overdue a statutory visit at the end of March this year in the north city area of Dublin. Throughout the HIQA report, it became apparent through a review of files that there were significant periods where children in care were not visited in line with statutory requirements.
The watchdog has said Tusla’s Dublin North City area has provided it with “satisfactory assurances” in relation to how the service was addressing these urgent issues. Eilidh MacNab, Dublin North East Regional Chief Officer, said she “fully acknowledged” that there were areas of practice that were not to the high standards expected.
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She said that while Tusla cannot “stand over” the findings of the HIQA report, children were not in danger. She told RTE: “We are taking immediate action to address these issues from the inspection in March and we’ve had significant improvements.
“It may well have been that the child has been seen but it hasn’t been recorded. Equally, it’s important to say that there was no child at immediate risk in any of the cases discussed by HIQA.
“When there was concern regarding a child, the response from Dublin Inner City was immediate. All 63 children now have an allocated social worker. The children identified as not having a statutory visit have been visited.
“How that happened we can’t stand over. Equally, there have been significant changes in oversight and governance.”
Data provided by the service in advance of the inspection showed there were 422 children in foster care, with 277 placed in general foster care and 145 placed in relative foster care. Staffing has been an issue, as data provided showed there was a high level of staff turnover.
Managers told inspectors there were six social work and three senior social work practitioner posts vacant on children in care teams in the north city area of Dublin. Ms MacNab added: “There are occasions whereby we don’t have enough staff but equally we have to ensure that we have contingency to ensure that children are seen.
“There has been unprec-edented referrals to the department increasing year on year.” Children were visited in line with regulations in only eight (40%) of the 20 files reviewed by inspectors.
In the remaining 11 cases (55%), children were not visited in line with regulations. HIQA’s report noted that Covid-19 restrictions did not account for the gaps in statutory visits found by inspectors on the files reviewed as part of this inspection.
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