Social Work Teams Updated – September 2023.

South Team

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone enjoyed the summer break and got to spend time together with your families. We have had a nice summer here in the South and are looking forward to getting back to our groups in September.

We have had a few young people across our group who are nearing independence and moving toward adulthood and we think of them now as we are nearing September and congratulations to those who have completed their leaving and Junior certificate exams.

We had a busy start to the year with inspections and getting new staff settled in. Anthony, Karen and Valerie are all settled into their various areas now and we are enjoying working together as a team. We have planned some joint visits across the team so we will get to know all of the carers in our area.

I would like to welcome the new carers into our area, the O’Donovans in Cork. We are delighted to have you in our area and look forward to working with you. We also welcome the new children that have been placed with families across our area this past number of months, and hope that things will continue to go well as we head towards the return of the school year.

That’s all of our news for now, we look forward to seeing you all at carer group and at the carer party in November.

Mid Team Update

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing summer full of lots of fun trips and activities. As you know, we now have three social work teams covering the country and ours covers part of Dublin- mostly South and West, Wicklow, Wexford, Laois, Tipperary and Kilkenny. We – Mary Adams, Team Manager, Margert Conroy, LSW, Claire Sheehan, LSW, Marguerite Mc Carthy, LSW and Elaine Herlihy, LSW- are newly formed since February and we have all been very busy since then with all that the  roles entail. We are all very passionate about providing high quality support to all of our foster carers (just as in the other teams).

We have been delighted to welcome some new carers in our area including the Byrnes and Mc Shane households in Dublin 12, the Smith’s and Muldowney’s in Laois, and the Hayden’s in Wexford.

Sadly, alongside this we have had some difficult endings to placements in the last few months and this has been challenging for children, carers and FFI staff, bringing with it loss, stress and uncertainty but we would like to recognise all of those carers for all their efforts, and especially those who had sustained long term placements for children with high needs. Wishing you all acceptance, resilience, gratitude and strength as you move on from these experiences.  Most carers who had endings hope to continue to foster but some have decided not to and that’s ok too. We would like to wish those carers all the best for the future.

We are delighted to report that we have all had nice holidays both at home and abroad recently and currently. Those who travelled went to Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and many of our carers have been off on their annual holidays too. One of our D24 foster families has been away for 6 weeks travelling Europe including France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. An amazing experience for birth and foster child! Other families are recently returned from the UK, the USA or the continent or are busy planning trips abroad.

It was great to meet new and familiar carers at Alive Outside in Kilruddery in July. Making memories together with the children was very rewarding for them all.

Best of luck to all the foster carers and children with back to pre-school, school and college this year. Always a busy time.

North Team Update

Hi Everyone, I hope you had a lovely summer with a break from usual routines and with lots of quality time spent together. We enjoyed it on the north team and some of us were able to attend the summer event in Kilruddery which was a great day. I would like to say a massive well done to all our leaving and junior cert students and their foster families for getting through the exams in June. We are all in support of a number of young adults on the north team who are on the cusp of flying the nest and we wish them the very best, an emotional time for all involved.

We had a  busy start to the year with our HIQA inspection in February, we work very hard to promote the fostering standards and to provide a high quality service so we were so delighted to see this reflected in the report.

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Stephen and Maeve Keeling, our newly approved foster carers on the north team, we wish them all the best on their fostering journey. I would also like to wish link social worker Elaine O’Flanagan all the very best on her new venture with the assessments team. Elaine is a great loss to the north team, we have thoroughly enjoyed working with her and are thankful that she will remain within the agency so we can continue to do that! We look forward to welcoming a new link social worker to the north team in the coming weeks.

That sums up our update and the only thing left to say is we hope to see you all at the carer do in November 😊