Our role is to inspect and monitor residential care, special care, foster care and child protection and welfare services and, earlier this week, we published a report on our monitoring and regulation of these services over the past 10 years.
In April we published a communication toolkit: ‘Fundamentals of good communication: How to have effective everyday conversations’. This toolkit was developed in collaboration with the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) and a number of stakeholders from children’s social services and aims to support effective communication.
This month we marked the ninth International Care Day, the world’s largest celebration of the rights of children and young people with experience of care. This includes children and young people who were or are being cared for by family members with the support of social workers, foster carers, or children and young people from children’s homes and residential units.
Our Chief Inspector of Social Services, Carol Grogan, and Head of Children’s Services, Eva Boyle, attended the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) event, ‘A Decade of Progress: Building a Better Future Together’, in Dublin Castle in February.
2022 was another challenging year for many children’s services across the country, according to our annual overview report of the inspection and regulation of children’s services.
We conducted 54 inspections throughout the year, and found improved levels of compliance against national standards and regulations in children’s services. However, areas requiring further improvements were also identified.
We have submitted a paper to policy-makers in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) and the Department of Health.
The paper, entitled ‘Key considerations to inform the National Policy Framework for Children and Young People 2023-2028’, was developed in partnership with the Mental Health Commission.
Welcome to the 50th edition of our newsletter.
Across the years and 50 issues, we have remained committed to not only working to improve the quality and safety of health and social care services, but also to keeping the people who use, provide and fund services informed about our work. This commitment is set out in our recently published Corporate Plan for 2022-2024.
Together with the Mental Health Commission, we submitted the Draft Overarching National Standards for the Care and Support of Children using Health and Social Care Services to the Minister for Health and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, for approval in July.
Our work in inspecting and monitoring children’s services in 2021 found that challenges remain with regard to resourcing to meet children’s needs.
We continue work on the draft National Standards for Children’s Social Services, with the draft standards submitted for Ministerial approval.
Taking a child-first approach, the standards aim to support staff in individual social services, as well as foster carers, to understand how they can achieve the best outcomes for children at risk or in the care of the State.
