Child’s removal from foster care ‘unwarranted’
The sudden removal by Tusla of an eight-year-old from his foster parents was unwarranted and should not have happened, a review has found.
The boy had been with the foster parents since the age of two and was due to remain with them until he was 18 years old.
The foster parents believe that the removal and general attitude to them from some staff in Tusla was connected to a complaint they made about failure to address the child’s needs.
The confidential review, seen by the Irish Examiner, found that the boy should not have been removed. It also found some staff had a fixed attitude towards the foster parents that was not based on any evidence.
After the boy’s removal, his foster parents were denied any access to him, which the report found was not in his interests.
The report described how the boy was suddenly removed from the foster parents during a visit to Tusla staff in April 2016.
“At this point, the social work team leader informed the foster mother that the child was being removed from her care,” the report said. “The child was told that he would not be going ‘back’ with his foster mother.
In the course of the child being informed he was not going home, the child banged his hand on a table and proceeded to become distressed, screamed excessively, lashed out, and kicked out.
Seven months before that, in November 2015, the foster parents had complained about a lack of support in addressing the boy’s needs. Around the same time, during a visit to a speech and language therapist, the boy made a comment that “someone was poking him whilst in bed”.
The therapist felt the comment was not serious enough to refer to Tusla, but later that day the foster mother contacted Tusla about it.
In a subsequent assessment, Tusla stated that the foster father was not of specific concern in relation to child sexual abuse. Over the course of a number of interviews with Tusla personnel and An Garda Síochána, the boy never made a disclosure of sexual abuse.
Yet on April 6, 2016, it was deemed that the boy should be removed using an emergency care order.
Six weeks later, before a full assessment of the situation was completed, Tusla ruled that the removal should be permanent.
The report found that the boy’s comment was the focus of a number of separate investigations over 17 months, which was “excessive given the nature of the comment”.
The child’s guardian ad litem, an independent figure appointed to represent the best interests of the child, was also critical of the child’s removal, the review found.
“The guardian is of the view there was not enough evidence to undertake such a drastic intervention in this child’s foster placement, the manner in which it was taken and the abrupt disruption in this child’s primary attachment,” said the review.
The guardian was also “totally opposed to the ending of the placement”.
