Tusla - Ireland's Child & Family Agency

Good communication is a key element of national standards developed by HIQA that are focused on the care and support of children. The Child and Family Agency (Tusla) is dedicated to supporting and promoting the development, welfare and protection of children, and the effective functioning of families. Good communication is an important component of this.

To support effective communication, HIQA, Tusla and a number of stakeholders with experience of delivering and using children’s social services have collaboratively developed a communication toolkit, ‘Fundamentals of good communication: How to have effective everyday conversations’.

The toolkit aims to support Tusla staff to communicate effectively with children, families and foster carers when they are using children’s social services. This aims to ensure that children, families and foster carers understand what is happening on a day-to-day basis, feel involved in decisions that affect their lives, and have a sense of control regarding their care and support.

Building on current good practice within Tusla, the toolkit is designed to focus the attention of staff on the purpose of each communication they have with children, families and foster carers and to make interaction meaningful.
 

We have developed a communication toolkit to support Tusla staff to communicate effectively with children, young people, families and foster carers.

The toolkit comes in two parts:

  1.   The first part of the toolkit is a tool that sets out key questions to help with everyday communication and reinforces the fundamentals of good communication.
                                                                   
 
  2.   The second part of the toolkit is a tool that contains practical case studies where communication between children, young people, families and foster carers and Tusla staff went well and also where it was more challenging. The case studies reflect practice across all of Tusla’s response pathways. Space is also provided for staff to reflect on their own experiences of communication and to consider how they will apply their learning from these practical case studies to their own practice.

                   
                                       Click here to explore the toolkit
 

Framework to support the implementation of the communication toolkit ‘Fundamentals of good communication: How to have effective everyday conversations’ in TuslaWe have developed a framework that sets out key learning from each stage of the collaborative process that informed the development of the communication toolkit.

This framework includes a number of important factors that can help Tusla to support successful implementation and sustainment of the toolkit in practice.

 

Watch Carol, our foster care representative, who sets of the positive impact the toolkit can have for children, families and foster carers. (you need to accept cookies to watch videos embedded on our website - alternatively you can access the video here)

                                                               
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