There is an urgent need for more people to volunteer as foster carers, a Green TD and former child protection social worker has said. 

Foster carers take care of children when their families are judged no longer capable of looking after them. Some foster families only look after children on an emergency basis overnight, while others care for them for many years. 

“It’s a really hard thing, I’m not going to mince words about it,” Patrick Costello told Moncrieff. 

“A lot of our foster carers are recruited by talking to other foster carers and they’ll openly talk about how it’s very difficult at times but how it’s very rewarding at the same time.” 

Fans of the children’s book and series The Story of Tracy Beaker by Dame Jacqueline Wilson will know that in Britain many care experienced children live in residential homes. 

In Ireland, by contrast, children in care live with foster carers in their family home - something that is only possible because enough people volunteer: 

“Really, living in a family is the best chance that a young person in state care can get,” Deputy Costello explained. 

“So I’m very grateful for anyone who comes forward for fostering.”

A mother is tying her daughter shoes.

Long-term placements

However, there are currently not enough long-term placements to meet demand and it is something the Dublin South Central TD is hugely concerned about: 

“Unfortunately, what I’m hearing from colleagues is that young people are coming into care and they’re moving from one emergency placement to another to another because the long-term placements aren’t there,” he continued. 

“And there’s a lot of things that impact that; there’s the lack of social workers, the lack of support for foster carers is part of this. 

“There are broader demographic shifts that we’re having less people coming forward to foster or able to foster - which is part of a problem as well.” 

Deputy Costello is urging the Government to boost the allowance paid to foster parents - something he says would send an important signal about “the vital role that they play” in Irish society. 

More importantly, he hopes that any Newstalk listener out there who is thinking about giving a child a loving home will get in inquire further: 

“A lot of the time there are people out there who might be thinking about [fostering],” he said, “who hear this conversation and might be nudged a little further and might check out fostering.ie to find out information about how they can sign up!”

Main image: A parent and children.