The Tusla – Child and Family Agency was first established on the 1st January 2014 as the dedicated State Agency responsible for improving wellbeing and outcomes for children. Tusla’s remit includes a range of broad-based and targeted services, as follows:
• Child protection and welfare services, including family support services.
• Family Resource Centres and associated national programmes.
• Early Years services regulation and inspection.
• Educational welfare responsibilities, including statutory education welfare services, the ‘School Completion Programme’ and the ‘Home School Community Liaison Scheme’.
• Alternative Care Services, including foster care, residential care, special care and aftercare
• Registration and inspection of non-statutory children’s residential centres.
• Domestic, sexual and gender-based violence services.
• Services related to the psychological welfare of children.
• Assessment, consultation, therapy and treatment services (ACTS).
• Adoption services, including information and tracing.

This annual report is the second published under our Corporate Plan 2015-2017 which provides the overarching policy guidance and performance framework and a commitment by Tusla, to ensure that its priorities and outcomes for children and families are fully integrated with national priorities through its annual business planning process. Whilst 2016 presented ongoing challenges for the Agency, the 2016 annual report provides an overview of progress and achievements and highlights include:
• A 19% reduction, from December 2015, in the number of cases awaiting an allocated social worker, and a 20% reduction in the number of high priority cases awaiting allocation.
• The establishment of 75 child and family support networks as part of the prevention, partnership and family support programme.
• There were 432 new registrations/notifications of early years services representing a three-fold increase on 2015.
• Expanded educational welfare services worked with 3,751 new individual children in the academic year 2015/2016.
• The Tusla feedback and complaints policy ‘Tell Us’ went live in late 2016