Focus on Fostering Week Press Release
Irish Foster Care Association Launch
National Focus on Fostering Week
'Better relationships through communications'
Media event: Wednesday October 26th, at 10.00 a.m. in Europa House, Dawson Street, Dublin 2
Focus on Fostering Week (Sunday 30th of October to Saturday 5th of November) provides those with an interest in fostering the opportunity to promote foster care as an extremely valuable support to children in care. With over 90 per cent of all children in care placed with foster carers, it is safe to say that foster care is the backbone of the Irish child care system. Focus on Fostering Week affords an opportunity to attract new foster care families to the service and to applaud the work and commitment that foster carers give week in and week out. In this the thirtieth anniversary the Irish Foster Care Association, we are making a special effort to promote Focus on Fostering Week.
A special event will take place on Wednesday October 26th, at 10.00 a.m. in Europa House, Dawson Street, Dublin 2. The National Director for Children and Family Services in the HSE, Gordon Jeyes, will launch Focus on Fostering Week.
Some 5,548 children are placed with foster care families in every community across the country. Children are placed in relative care and in general foster care. By international standards, the number of children placed in foster care in Ireland is very high. According to figures produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services in June 2011, 74 per cent of children in care in the US were placed in foster care, while statistics published by UK's Department of Education's indicate that 73 percent (2010) of children in English State care were placed in foster care. In Ireland, the equivalent figure is over 90 per cent.
Foster carers are bound to maintain a strict set of confidentiality rules surrounding the placement of a child. This is only right and proper. As a result, however, the very great lengths that many foster carers go to in order to support a child placed in their care is not recognised. The publication in August of the Ombudsman for Children's report into the provision of supports and therapeutic services for a child with special needs in foster care illustrated just one example of the lengths that foster carers sometimes go in order to cater for the needs of children placed in their care. The Ombudsman's report provided a rare insight into the struggle and huge personal emotional and financial expense that some foster carers experience in catering for a child in their care.
HIQA has rightly criticised the failure of statutory services to manage and deliver a professional foster care system. There are many examples where children placed in care do not have an allocated social worker, foster carers do not have the support of a link worker and children are placed with carers who have not been fully assessed or approved. It is important to note, however, that while HIQA has been critical of services delivered by the HSE, HIQA reports have consistently found that the level of care provided by foster carers is of a very high standard. This is an important distinction that should be recognised.
IFCA branches, in many cases in cooperation with the HSE, will run events like coffee mornings, training sessions and information meetings throughout the country next week.
For further details, please contact: Annette O'Malley at the Irish Foster Care Association on
01-4599474 or info@ifca.ie