Statutory visits to children in foster care 'requires improvement'
An internal Tusla Cork audit found that statutory visits to children in foster care were only taking place in just over a third of placements reviewed.
In 'Assurance Review: The Care Planning and Review arrangements for Children placed in Foster Care (Cork Area)', conducted by the National Practice Assurance and Service Monitoring Team in November 2019, the review team audited a random sample of 80 cases of children placed in foster care the previous January.
The audit, received under Freedom of Information, noted that a review of national metrics ranked the Cork Tusla area "as the highest nationally for the number of children placed in foster care."
All cases reviewed had been allocated a social worker and there was evidence of good and improved work in many areas, although some shortcomings were highlighted.
Statutory visits to children in foster care placements were occurring, as per regulations, for 35% of the files reviewed, but in the remaining 65% of records reviewed there was no evidence of the number of required visits to the child or evidence that these visits had taken place.
Current care plans were in place for 64% of the children included in the sample and there was a current statutory child in care review record on 32% of files reviewed.
According to the audit team: "The review found that compliance with statutory requirements in respect of statutory child in care review timeframes requires improvement. In one instance, a child had not been subject to a statutory child in care review since November 2017.
"Compliance with statutory visits to children in foster care requires improvement. The recording of statutory visits also requires improvement."
Elsewhere, it said: "The Dataset return confirmed that 20 children were received into care over the past 12 months, subject to an emergency care order in the Cork Area. Of these, none had a statutory child in care review within 14 days of placement."
It also said: "There was no evidence that social work managers were quality assuring care planning and review work."
The audit also found that 48 children were received into care on a voluntary basis in the previous 12 months in the Cork Area and of these, four had been the subject of a statutory child care review within 30 days of having been received into care.