Tusla to set up register of ‘struck off’ foster carers

The outgoing chief executive of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, has said it will prioritise putting together a national register of foster carers who have been effectively struck off, sometimes due to possible child welfare concerns.

It comes as the agency said it did not have figures as to the number of foster carers who have been de-registered, as opposed to those who have elected voluntarily to stop fostering or who have retired.

Tusla does maintain up-to-date national tallies as to the number of foster carers, both approved and unapproved, inclusive of relative foster carers. These figures are published every quarter.

The case of ‘Grace’, a now-adult woman with a disability who is alleged to have suffered years of abuse and neglect while in the care of a foster family in the South-East, has thrown new focus on the way in which child welfare services handled the matter.

In response to a question from the Irish Examiner as to the number of foster carers who are effectively deregistered, either permanently or temporarily, Tusla said there were no overall statistics, but they will be collected in future.

Gordon Jeyes, who retires on Friday as Tusla chief executive, stressed he had no child-welfare reports regarding anyone currently providing fostering.

However, he admitted the lack of figures on de-registered foster carers was an omission and, while local health areas would have the figures, they had not been collated nationally.

“Areas will have information about those deregistered. We need to create that national register,” he said. “That is the priority for this year. We do need a full national list of foster carers, but all our general and private foster carers are assessed — nobody fosters without assessment.”

The majority of unapproved foster carers are relative foster carers and Mr Jeyes said it was “sensible” and in the interests of the child “in a crisis” to allow extended families to look after a child, where possible.

Mr Jeyes also reiterated that he was not aware of any personnel who had been involved in Grace’s care or placement who were now working with Tusla. On Tuesday, the director general of the HSE, Tony O’Brien, told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee: “Some of the people who have had some role or other in respect of this issue in the South-East are currently in the employ of Tusla.”

However, Mr Jeyes said some of Mr O’Brien’s comments had “got conflated a bit” and that he was not aware of any new allegations or any child welfare concerns within fostering, and that he was satisfied that, if there were any, he would have been told.