Social workers waste time looking for care places which they know do not exist, the report says. Although the Eastern Health Board is desperate for foster parents, people who are interested are not being dealt with promptly enough, it adds.
Social workers can only get the board to release extra money to help a child if they are able to show that they searched for a foster care or residential place in all of the board's 10 areas, it says.
"Consequently areas are daily faxing all other areas with details of cases with requests for placements, and areas in receipt of the requests are faxing negative replies," it says.
The board said last night it plans to create a computerised database of all available residential and foster care placements. On fostering, the report says: "Many staff expressed views about the very real difficulties of recruiting foster carers given the current levels of payment and concern about allegations of abuse."
A campaign to recruit foster parents "was well planned and efficient in its initial response stage, but has not been capitalised on due to pressure on staff in areas," it says. "Thus whilst there is a shortage of foster carers there is simultaneously a list of inquirers who have not had an assessment initiated."
Measures should be taken immediately to ensure "that all inquiries are processed and assessed efficiently and in no more than six months from initial contact to appointment as foster carers."
The board said last night that "due to staff shortages we had not been able to deal with all inquiries from people who wished to become foster parents as promptly as we would have wished but we are addressing this". The review group was made up of representatives of the board and IMPACT and was chaired by Ms Leonie Lunny, director of the National Social Services Board.