DUBLIN, August 26 (RIA Novosti), Mark Hirst – Since figures started to be recorded in 2007, Ireland has seen a 23 percent rise in children being cared for by the Irish state, a child welfare official in Ireland told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
Sharon Waters of the Irish Child and Family Agency declined to speculate whether the rise was linked to the 2008 economic crash.
“I wouldn’t speculate on the economic down turn. There has certainly been a year on year increase in referrals since 2007,” Waters said.
Official figures have revealed that 6,500 children are now in the care of the state, which, authorities say has led directly to a serious shortage of foster carers in Ireland’s capital city of Dublin.
Waters told RIA Novosti that authorities are now instigating a new approach to dealing with the rise in referrals to Government agencies.
“The whole child and family agency project is a new approach to dealing with child protection and child welfare in Ireland. There is already a significant reform program underway to try and address issues like the rise in referrals,” Waters said.
“Our business model looks more at early intervention and proportionate responses at the start, supporting families in communities through family resource centers and hoping to steer away from a situation where a child needs to be taken into care,” Waters added.
Waters was keen to stress that the rate of child fostering in Ireland remains unusually high, but agency was still at the “start of a process” to implement an adequate level of child protection in the country.
“We do have an extraordinary rate of fostering in Ireland, which is quite unusual and more than 90 percent of children in Ireland who are in care are in foster care,” Waters told RIA Novosti.
“The agency is still at the start of a process to supporting child protection in Ireland,” Waters added.
