Two sisters in the care of the State who had asked to be placed with an Irish family will instead live at a residential unit, the Dublin District Family Court heard yesterday.
Both girls have been in the care of the Child and Family Agency since they arrived at Dublin Airport unaccompanied and have sought asylum here.
The girls had requested a private meeting with president of the District Court Judge Rosemary Horgan through their solicitor and the judge had agreed.
She listened to their concerns about wanting to live with an Irish foster family instead of in a residential unit and wanting to be kept together.
‘Clinical’ observation
They had said while they fully respected the staff there, they felt the unit was “clinical” and that staff appeared to be “observing them as subjects to be viewed”, with details of their behaviour and mood recorded in daily logs. This made them feel “very bad”.
They told the judge, with the assistance of an interpreter, that the residential setting “destabilised their equilibrium”.
They also asked that those dealing with them consider what it might be like in a foreign country trying to understand what was being said.
The social worker told the judge most children in care felt the same about the use of log books in residential units, like they were “in a goldfish bowl”, but it was a requirement for the registration of units that staff kept daily logs on the children.
He also said two separate foster placements had been considered for the girls.
One had involved a family from their own country, but the girls did not want to be placed with them. And the girls had a sleepover at another placement, but that had not worked out.
Good placement
He said the girls were doing “really well” in their current residential unit and he recommended they move to a residential unit near their school which was “not just an appropriate placement but a very good one”.
The social worker also said the girls’ asylum application to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner had been rejected and they were appealing it.
He said when the older of the two girls reached 18, she would be moved out of the child residential unit and, if she had not achieved asylum status, to another centre for adults.
“I’ll try as hard as I can to have her placed close to her sister,” he said.
He also said the girls’ parents, who remain in their home country, had refused to engage with the agency.
Making the full care order, until the girls reach 18, the judge said they were “extremely vulnerable”, but “very eloquent” given the experiences they had been through.
She described their social worker as “very committed”, and said he’d considered all the options available to them.
The judge was satisfied the agency had “the best interests of both young people at heart”.
