Staff shortage affects quality of foster care

Foster care services in Galway and Roscommon are not adequately staffed, which is having a negative impact on vulnerable children, according to new report.

HIQA (Health Information and Quality Authority), has highlighted the problem of understaffing of the two counties’ foster care services following an inspection this summer.

HIQA pointed out that the unfilled posts in the service were impacting on the care received by children.

The report noted that staff were “appropriately skilled and qualified for their roles with varying levels of experience in fostering, child protection and in working with children in care.”

But staff vacancies in social care and administration was impacting on children

HIQA said: “The service was impacted by two vacancies on children in care teams and two vacancies on fostering teams. In addition, there were two unfilled posts of staff on long term leave in Roscommon.Inspectors found that across Galway and Roscommon there were 23 children without an allocated child in care social worker reported to be due to vacancies and long term leave. Inspectors found that some children had a number of different social workers assigned to them and experienced periods of unallocation due to staff leave, and this impacted on a consistent service for children.”

HIQA said there were four unfilled administrative posts in the service, which was impacting on care. “These posts had been approved, but had not been filled and inspectors found there was an impact on service delivery. Managers and social workers told inspectors that the lack of administrative support in the service had an impact on direct work with children.

“There was limited administrative support to undertake tasks such as minute taking for strategy meetings and reviews, providing reception for offices, maintenance of files, photocopying, producing reports and correspondence. Social workers told inspectors that a significant portion of their time was spent carrying out these tasks which in turn affected their time available to visit children and carers. Inspectors observed that the impact was reflected in children’s files, visits to children and delays in minutes and reports in some cases, and team leaders told inspectors that basic administrative tasks were impacting on social work time,” HIQA added.

Galway/Roscommon is one of 17 services areas served by Túsla, the child and family agency. It is the fourth largest area in the country, and when combined with Mayo it ranked as one of the most deprived in the country.

HIQA said there were 439 children in foster care in Galway and Roscommon at the time of the inspection in June. Some 339 of these lived with non-relative foster carers and 100 children lived with relatives.

Of the 439 children in foster care, 412 (93.8%) had an allocated social worker. Data also reflected that 291 foster carers (100%) had an allocated link worker. There were no children waiting for foster care placements, the report said.

The report said the population of Galway had the highest number of people from the Traveller community in Ireland and “this was proportionately reflected in the profile of children in the foster care service, as just under one third of children in foster care in Galway were from this community.”

“The culture of children from the Traveller community was respected and promoted by the service,” it said.