The first formal national standards for foster care will be published later today.
They will provide guidelines for the Inspector of Foster Care Services who begins work in the next few weeks.
The inspector, who will be employed by the Social Services Inspectorate (SSI), will be charged with investigating standards for looking after children, with 4,100 currently in foster care.
These National Standards in Foster Care are published by the Department of Health and Children following concerns about the sector highlighted in 2001 by the Working Group on Foster Care. These benchmarks for quality have been developed by a committee established following that report.
"It is the intention of the Department that these standards will serve as a basis for consistently promoting quality in the foster care services," a spokeswoman for the Department said yesterday.
Although they would not be legally binding they were based on relevant legislation, she said.
She further admitted that the sector had never been comprehensively inspected.
However, she said "all placements are being kept a constant eye on, with visits by social workers etc".
The standards look at the rights of the foster-child, support for and training of foster-parents and the policies of the health boards that manage the system.
Ms Michele Clarke, chief inspector with the SSI, explained that in the first instance the new inspector would carry out a "paper inspection", looking at such issues as how many children in foster care have been allocated their own social worker and when they had their last visit.
"I would say that the inspector will take a couple of health boards at random and inspect the foster care systems in place there," she said.
"The fact that there will only be one inspector looking at this area means that it will be slow, but we cannot take one of the other four inspectors looking at the residential sector away from that at the moment."
In conjunction with the National Standards in Foster Care, which will be distributed to health board personnel working in the area, the Department is also today publishing the Children's Book About Foster Care, to be distributed to all under-12s in foster care.
Written by a children's author, Siobhán Parkinson, it tells young children, in language suitable for them, and with pictures and cartoons about their care, why they are there and their rights.
