The term corporate parent is unfortunate, redolent of bureaucracy. It refers to the situation when Tusla must assume responsibility for a child’s wellbeing, health, and development because these needs cannot be met within the family, and relative or foster care is not a viable option due to complex needs.
Someone with decades of experience in residential child care recently said to me grimly that if Tusla as a corporate parent were a flesh-and-blood parent, its children would be taken away. His profound frustration and near-despair arise from having watched the neglect of children’s residential care for decades, including sidelining the voluntary sector while farming out care to profit-driven providers.
The terrible events of recent weeks, including a Ukrainian teenager, Vadym Davydenko, fatally stabbed in special emergency accommodation, and a social care worker injured, were horrifying but not surprising.
Tusla could not have predicted the large influx we have had of Ukrainians, particularly unaccompanied minors, but it might have been able to pivot and adjust if the whole care system had not been in permacrisis. The war in Ukraine is a partial explanation for why Tusla is not coping, but it is not an excuse.
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There are many hard-working, dedicated people in Tusla. We rarely thank the organisation for the many children who are well cared for, who go on to overcome appalling challenges and lead happy lives.
But when things go wrong in any child’s life, the results are often catastrophic. It is not just a teenager who came here for safety from a brutal war and is now dead, or the alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl. These terrible events leave us shocked and reeling. But what about all the nameless kids who are shifted from one placement to another, in Carlow one day and Cork the next, because those are the only beds available?
What about the decommissioning of high support units around 2014? These had allowed some young people to avoid special care entirely (the highest level of support, where a young person is detained for their own safety) and helped others to transition from special care safely.
What about dozens of children in privately provided special emergency accommodation and residential care, sometimes for months or even years, without proper inspection or quality control? Justice Miriam Walsh described this as profiting from the misery of children.
Private providers recruiting residential care assistants for a pilot project with Tusla are looking for people with a Level 5/6 QQI course (a certificate versus a degree), and pay is €14.45 an hour for a 48-hour week. By contrast, in the statutory and voluntary sector, social care workers earn HSE consolidated pay rates, with incremental pay rises and pensions – but more importantly, with professional development plans that focus on deepening skills and competence.
In the voluntary sector, where people often stay with the same organisation for years, there is a strong sense of teamwork and collaboration. Employees have a degree at a minimum and often advanced degrees. Skills such as de-escalation of conflict are trained, valued and modelled. Boards of Management have access to significant expertise relevant to the care of children.
In the volatile private sector, people move constantly, seeking better work and pay conditions. The children who have already experienced significant adversity and desperately need continuity of care bear the brunt.
As for under-12s, they should not be in residential care at all, but at home, or relative or foster care, if we had properly resourced support services. In 2007, when there were 93 children under 12 in residential care, Hiqa said there should be none. At the end of 2024, there were 92, including 41 aged under 10.
The lack of a proper housing strategy blights everything, including the care of our most vulnerable children. Adult children unable to move out of the family home mean that parents have no spare room and cannot consider fostering. Private agencies buying up apartments and houses puts further pressure on the market.
Tusla has no spare capacity to house those in need of emergency accommodation or with highly complex needs.
This is where inter-agency co-operation and collaboration between State Departments like Children and Housing should be happening, but does residential care even feature in the minds of those responsible for housing strategies?
Stakeholders have been invited to a town-hall meeting in early November to discuss the Department of Children’s National Policy Framework on Alternative Care. Having neglected the sector for decades, the fear is now that a hasty, cobbled-together plan will emerge. This framework will fail without an initial national review by international experts, identifying where outcomes are best for children.
Any reforms must be costed and resourced, or else we will end up with another expensive failure. Money spent on children is well spent, even if only for the pragmatic reasons of avoiding spending far more in the future on criminal justice, mental health, addiction and homelessness.
The Garda van set on fire in Saggart is not all that is burning. Our whole care system is reduced to firefighting but it is children who are in danger of being consumed by the flames.
