Our work in inspecting and monitoring children’s services in 2021 found that challenges remain with regard to resourcing to meet children’s needs.
Last year, we conducted 56 inspections across foster care, special care, residential care, child protection and welfare services and Oberstown Children’s Detention Campus.
We found that there were improvements in compliance against national standards and regulations, and there was an ongoing commitment to delivering good quality and safe services to children across services.
However, there was further room for improvement in governance and management, and resourcing services. For example, many children did not have an allocated social worker or experienced multiple changes in social workers over short periods of time. However, where children had an allocated social worker who met them consistently, they received a good-quality service. Towards the end of 2021, the number of children who did not have an allocated social worker increased in many service areas.
Furthermore, many children experienced delays in accessing the service or a care placement which was appropriate to their needs. A small number of children experienced delays coming into care due to the lack of availability of suitable placements.
These findings and risks were highlighted to Tusla throughout the year, and Tusla developed a residential strategy to guide its future planning and delivery of residential care.
For the first time, we also published a children’s version of the overview report, which summarised the main findings from inspections for children, and included what they told us throughout the year.
Read the full reports and findings here.