Health boards should consider adoption for all children in long-term care, according to a report which has been accepted by the Government.
It warns that some young people are in danger of getting trapped in the care system because their cases are not being reviewed by social workers.
Parents are giving up fostering because they believe they are not being supported by health boards while prospective new foster parents are put off by inordinate delays in processing their applications, it says.
The report, Foster Care - A Child-Centred Partnership, was produced by a working party of Irish Foster Care Association representatives, health boards, social workers and the Department of Health and Children. It was published yesterday by the Minister for Children, Ms Mary Hanafin.
In all, there are about 3,300 children in foster care and 700 in residential care, the latter in specially staffed units. The report says: "Some children remain in long-term foster care when adoption may in fact be in their best interests".
Foster children can be adopted without their natural parents' consent with the permission of the High Court, but there were only six applications for such adoptions in 1998 and seven in 1999.
Health boards, it says, should "actively consider the option of adoption, in the best interests of the individual child, for all children in long-term foster care".
It calls on the Department to study the feasibility of open adoption, in which the natural parent would not lose contact with the adopted child.
Some children go into foster care without detailed care plans, although the Child Care Regulations state that such plans should be provided for each child, the report complains.
Even with a care plan, the child's situation is not always reviewed regularly, and there was a serious danger that the children would simply drift in care and that their care plans would become obsolete, the report says.
Parents drop out of fostering due to lack of support, difficulties over financial assistance, inadequate information about the children placed with them or the difficulty of the task.
Abuse allegations and the subsequent investigations also exact a toll on foster parents. "Foster carers are more likely to be the subject of an allegation of child abuse and neglect than the average family in the community and, indeed, children have been abused while in foster care," the report says.
"The experience of being investigated for alleged abuse is very traumatic for foster carers and their families," it says. "It can lead to feelings of betrayal, powerlessness and anger."
One of the main recommendations of the report, an increase in the fostering allowance to £200 a week, was accepted by the Government and announced by Ms Hanafin late last year.