In May 2025 a senior member of the Child and Family Agency management team attended Dublin District Court to provide an update on the audit being conducted by the CFA of cases where there had been no social worker allocated to children in care. The judge had earlier made a direction for a review of cases where there had been no social worker allocated, despite the court order that children under care orders be allocated a social worker.
The management of the CFA had been asked to attend the court on a regular basis to provide updated figures to the court. The court had asked for the CEO of the CFA to attend court and this was scheduled to take place in mid-June.
The CFA manager informed the court that the audit had been completed sooner than anticipated.
The court was told that 1,083 care orders had been audited. That number had changed since the previous update because some children had aged out, some had been adopted and some had been recorded on the system incorrectly as Section 18’s (full care orders) instead of Section 17’s (interim care orders).
The cases were now being allocated into categories as directed. The court heard that by June all the figures would be collated and cross referenced.
There had been 685 breaches verified to dated. The breakdown of the breaches into categories was due in mid-June and it would include the 250 previously notified.
The judge reminded the CFA that cases had been re-entered at the request or order of the court and not by the CFA. He added that figures previously provided were 1,161 and not 1,083. The CFA manager said that cross-referencing was still being done and that to date 685 breaches had been identified. She said all files had been audited. Some paper files had been recalled for verification.
The judge pointed out that the 1,083 Care Orders related to 1,083 children and out of those figures there were 685 breaches relating to 476 children. All of these had been identified following the direction made by the judge the previous July (July 2024).
The CFA CEO was due to attend the following month.
A full breakdown was due to be provided to court on 9th June 2025 to include the 1,083 cases, the number of children, the number of breaches and the category of the breach.