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Audit reveals litany of foster care failures
07 March 2010 By John Burke and Ian Kehoe
A review has been ordered into foster care in the south of the country after a damning audit found that children were routinely placed with people who had not been vetted.
In one instance, the audit discovered that a child was placed with a foster carer who had a number of criminal convictions and who was not registered.
In one area in the Health Service Executive’s south region, evidence emerged of a two-tier payment system, with unvetted homes receiving less money from the HSE for accepting foster children.
The HSE has ordered the full review after the confidential audit found that more than one-third of foster carers examined in a sample survey in the region had not been through mandatory Garda and HSE vetting. The audit of HSE South, one of the HSE’s largest regions, said this was in direct contravention of child welfare guidelines, and said a review should be launched as a ‘‘matter of urgency’’.
In its formal response to the audit submission, the Fostering Resource Unit (FRU), which is tasked with screening foster carers, said it was ‘‘unaware’’ of the number of unassessed carers, but suspected ‘‘that it would be considerable’’. Details of the audit come as the HSE faces growing pressure over the state care of minors, following the release last week of a report into the death of Dublin teenager Tracey Fay.
The audit, released to The Sunday Business Post under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals a litany of problems in relation to foster care in the south region.
An audit sample of foster carers in the region found that 37 per cent were not registered with the FRU and were not subject to background checks.
An estimated 112 children are in foster care in HSE South, of whom 17 per cent were sampled by the audit department. The department increased the number of cases it assessed, after four of the first five carers turned out to be unregistered.
In one case, the FRU provided a negative recommendation in relation to a foster carer, but this was overturned by the Social Work Department and the courts. The audit, carried out by the HSE’s internal audit division nine months ago, noted that the risk of non-compliance with the regulations was increasing.
It said that referrals for assessment by the FRU can take more than one year to process. This, it said, breached the regulations, which state that it should be done within 12 weeks, even for an emergency placement.
‘‘It is essential that management undertake a review of all foster carers in the HSE South to determine the overall level of non-compliance with the regulatory assessment process and instigate corrective action accordingly," the audit team said. ‘‘Any existing deviation from the regulations should be documented and controlled, with particular emphasis on cases where carers have not been referred for assessment."
In their reply to the audit findings, HSE management admitted that within one area of HSE South they were paying a lower rate to relatives and non-relatives who had been given children to foster but who had not gone through the assessment process.
The name of the HSE South area was redacted from the report released to this newspaper. They acknowledged that this was an error and have moved to correct the practice.
FRU management said that referring foster carers to the unit, as proposed by the HSE audit, would ‘‘effectively create awaiting list that would be impossible to deal with’’.
The HSE South FRU said that it was processing relative care referrals as quickly as possible. ‘‘While this deviates from the 12 weeks outlined in the regulations, it very precisely reflects what is possible to do with the resources at our disposal."
At present the FRU screens, assesses and trains applicants for fostering and support while also monitoring the carers.
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