Tusla is tendering for new childcare services

The Child and Family Agency is beefing up its residential childcare services, including a new emergency respite unit in Cork.

A tender posted by Tusla is seeking expressions of interest in providing three six-bed units in the Dublin area to provide care services for separated children seeking asylum (SCSA), as well as two three-bed units for emergency respite, in addition to the future setting up of another unit in Cork.

As of the end of last week, Tusla had received 95 referrals into its team for separated children seeking asylum.

While the plans for the emergency respite beds in Cork are a new aspect of the emergency respite service, Tusla said the other units in the tender represent “the re-contracting of existing accommodation”.

A Tusla spokesperson said: “Specialist residential centres are used to accommodate separated children over the age of 12 for an initial period of orientation, observation, assessment and support following their arrival in Ireland.”

Emergency respite units accommodate children who are the subject of care orders and who are not placed in relative foster care or in a general foster care placement.

According to the tender: “At any moment in time approximately one in 20 of the children and young people taken into the care of the Child and Family Agency will be placed with children’s respite services. While the majority of children and young people placed in children’s respite services are there because of family problems and others have experienced neglect or some other form of abuse, most are placed in respite care because their behaviour is too challenging to be managed in any other care setting.

“It is also the case that some young people actually choose a placement in respite care because they do not wish to be placed with any family but their own.”

Tusla’s foster care services in the Midlands was criticised this week for a number of shortcomings, including a lack of available foster placements.

An inspection by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) last May found 41 foster care placements were made outside the region.

The existing unit is in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, but the tender is seeking a new unit in Cork following a successful Tusla pilot programme in the Midlands.