Cork has highest number of children on Tusla notification system

Cork had the highest number of children deemed active on Tusla’s child protection and notification system and was on track to have the highest number of child abuse and welfare referrals across 2019.

Information captured by Tusla’s metrics tracker also shows that Cork was the area with the highest number of children in care in 2019.

The data is regularly updated and final provisional figures for the last months of 2019 were posted this week by the child and family agency.

The provisional figures show that in the last quarter of 2019 Cork had the highest number of children deemed active on Tusla’s child protection and notification system at 111 — the highest figure for any area throughout the year.

All of those cases had an allocated social worker.

Cork also had the highest number of referrals made regarding child abuse and welfare in the second and third quarters of 2019, and the second-highest amount nationally in the first quarter of last year. It had the highest number of referrals for sexual abuse across all three quarters up to October.

Cork had the second-highest number of cases open to social work for the full duration of 2019, second only to Dublin North, and, at the end of the year, 2,700 cases in Cork were open.

The number of cases awaiting allocation to a social worker remained steady or fell over the course of the year in most areas, but the data shows that, in the Dublin South West/Kildare/West Wicklow area, it almost doubled in the space of two months, from 519 cases in October to 989 in December.

Most areas also saw a consistent level of cases awaiting allocation that are deemed high priority over the course of 2019, or significant decreases towards the end of the year, with the mid-west an exception, going from 23 such cases in November to 86 in December.

Cork also had the highest number of children in care across all of 2019, peaking in December at 781, and the highest number of children in residential care, again peaking in December at 43.

As for age profile of children in care, those aged 6 to 15 were higher than older age groups in each of the four quarters.

The figures also show that Cork had the highest number of foster carers of any area in the country over the course of 2019, and the highest number of unapproved relative foster carers, including for a child placed for longer than 12 weeks.