63 children in care delayed social worker visits

 

A child in Tusla's foster care service was not visited by a social worker for over three years, according to the Health Information and Quality Authority.

An inspection report of foster care in the north city area of Dublin showed there were at least 63 children overdue a statutory visit at the end of March this year.

There were four further cases whereby "it was unclear if they had an up-to-date visit" and almost all of these cases were the responsibility of one office.

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.

According to these figures, 287 foster care households were overseen by the service area of Tusla, according to HIQA.

Inspectors were informed by managers that there were six social work positions and three senior social work practitioner positions open on teams for children in care.

High staff turnover rates were also indicated by the data the area gave.

A check of the files revealed that there were lengths of time during which the children in care were not visited as required by law.

Inspectors thus examined 20 children's files to evaluate the quantity and calibre of statutory visits.

Only eight (or 40 percent) of the 20 files examined by inspectors showed instances of visits to children that were compliant with rules.

In another instance, a social worker's absence resulted in a social care worker seeing the child.

The remaining 11 situations (55%) were visits to minors that did not follow the rules.

As visits were notably overdue at the time of inspection, supervisors were notified of seven of these incidents.

During COVID-19, social workers were not allowed to visit children in their homes; instead, they communicated with kids via phone and video calls.

The report did indicate that the gaps in statutory visits discovered by inspectors on the files examined as part of this inspection were not taken into consideration by the Covid-19 limits.

In one instance, the child was last seen in their foster home in January 2019—three years and two months before the inspection—despite the fact that they had been seen outside of their placement nine months earlier.

In a second instance, the child had been seen by a social worker previous to the inspection and the last video call recorded was one year and five months earlier.

Inspectors looked at a third situation in which the youngster had been visited the week before the inspection but had not been seen for 15 months.

Although the majority of monitoring and support visits to foster carers were of high quality, according to HIQA, the absence of visits to foster children and caregivers meant that the most fundamental safeguards for children in care were not in place.

Following the inspection, the Area Manager was given an urgent compliance plan due to these risks.

According to HIQA, Tusla's Dublin North City region gave it sufficient guarantees about how the service was resolving these problems.

Eilidh MacNab, the regional chief officer for Dublin North East, stated that she "completely admitted" that several areas of practise fell short of the high expectations.

"We are taking quick action to rectify these deficiencies from the inspection in March," she said on RTÉ's News at One. "We've had considerable improvements."

Children were not in risk, she maintained, despite the fact that Tusla cannot "stand above" the HIQA report's conclusions.

"It's possible that the youngster has been spotted, but nothing has been noted about it. Furthermore, it's crucial to note that in none of the cases covered by HIQA was a kid in urgent danger.

"Dublin Inner City responded right away whenever a child's safety was an issue."

"A social worker is now assigned to each of the 63 kids. The children who were listed as lacking a required visit were visited. We have no idea how that came to be. Significant improvements have also been made in governance and oversight."

Also noted by Ms. MacNab was the continuous issue of worker retention and recruitment.

"There are times when we don't have enough staff, but we also need to make sure we have backup plans in place so that kids are seen. She added that the position of a social worker is "a highly difficult profession" and that there have been unheard-of referrals to the department that have been rising year over year."