THERE were delays in reporting child safety concerns to Gardaà for children placed in foster care in the Mid West, inspectors looking into the workings of Tusla have found.
And the child and family agency needs to do more to involve children in foster care in the planning of the care process, the official inspection found.
Data showed there were 183 concerns raised about 67 children in the last 12 months.
Health watchdog HIQA also found that more needs to be done to bring visits to children in care and reviews of care into line with legislation.
The report on the Mid West inspection just published was a follow on to a previous inspection carried out in May 2024, when a number of issues were found in the service.
The latest inspection took place between 23-25 and 30 September 2025.
Inspectors found “delays in the reporting of some concerns to An Garda SÃochána, which meant that the service was not fully compliant” with national guidelines published in 2017.
“New systems had been introduced to improve governance and oversight of notifications to An Garda SÃochána; however, at the time of the inspection, these systems were at the early stages of implementation,” inspectors found.
The foster care service “continued to be challenged by the lack of available placements due to a shortage of available foster carers, despite efforts made to recruit and retain foster carers”.
Inspectors found that the service “was committed to strengthening the inclusion of children in the care planning process. While some progress had been made in this area in terms of more children having an up-to-date care plan, the participation of children in child-in-care reviews was low and required improvement”.
“Other areas for improvement included ensuring statutory visits to children and the scheduling of child-in-care reviews were completed in line with regulations. The service had a plan in place to improve compliance in these areas, and there was good oversight and monitoring of this by management”.
Responding to the findings in the report, a statement from Tusla welcomed the publication, saying that “five standards were assessed, of which one standard was found be compliant, and four substantially compliant”.
Tusla said “the inspection noted a number of positive aspects of foster care services in the Mid West, which included the capacity of the area to provide a quality, safe, and effective foster care service”.
“This marked a significant improvement on the previous inspection in May 2024 and was largely due to the effective workplace planning, the effective use of local and regional resources to manage deficits in the system and the strengthening of governance structures to ensure good monitoring and oversight of unallocated cases”.
To find out more about fostering or to register for an online foster information session, visit fostering.ie