CHILDREN in foster care have little opportunity to speak out if they are mistreated, according to a psychologist who spent most of her childhood in Goldenbridge orphanage.
Ms Bernadette Fahy helped in the making of an RTE documentary, Dear Daughter, about the physical and psychological abuse of children at the Dublin orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy.
She said she feared that in another 20 years RTE would be screening a documentary about children trapped in foster care.
She believed the best option for children in care was residential homes operating like normal family homes. They should be less institutionalised than residential homes at present.
She did not believe yearly or half yearly inspections by social workers was enough to protect children from abuse.
"In our situation we had the cigire [inspector from the Department of Education] coming every year and what did it do for us? They would give six weeks' notice they were coming and we would be up slaving day and night to have the place shining for them and we would all be there in our frilly clothes."
Social workers in the cities are too busy to give close attention to foster children, and in the country along distances militate against adequate protection, she said.
Realistically speaking, it is not possible for them to monitor every child, with all the other things they are trying to cope with," she said.
Ms Fahy, who is based in London, has carried out research in children's residential homes and counsels people who have been in care as children.
As a result, she says, "I am not in favour of fostering. In my research I, quite often found examples of children being fostered and the family would have them for days, weeks, months or years and couldn't cope with the child, or the social workers were too strapped to support the family, and the child was given back to a home. That's another rejection. There is a very serious message the child gets that no one can love me unconditionally."
In addition, she said, there was no incest taboo to protect foster children from abuse.
A better option than fostering, she said, would be "residential homes run like regular homes and not like institutions. Even the cur rent ones have an institutional tinge to them. Some kids find staff too busy to talk to them."
Children in care need love rather than treatment, she said. "Now they tend to turn children into cases that need treatment rather than children who need love. Staff are trained to be staff, they are not trained to be loving people," and this should be changed.