Child support agency Barnardos has opened a new Post Adoption Services centre in Cork.

They said the development will allow Barnardos to reach more adopted children and young people across Ireland and allow the organisation to be available to both internationally and domestically adopted children and teenagers, including those adopted from foster care.

Barnardos Post Adoption Service supports more than 150 adopted children every year through individual and group interventions. 

Support and training is provided to adoptive parents to help them raise children who have had significant early trauma in their lives.

The new Cork centre is being supported with increased funding from Tusla Adoption Services. 

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone: "It is an historic day. For the first time, therapeutic post adoption services will be available to all adopted children and teenagers: whether adopted domestically, internationally, or adopted from foster care, wherever they are in the country."

Barnardos CEO Suzanne Connolly: “This new expansion, with increased funding from Tusla National Adoption Services, has allowed Barnardos to open new Post Adoption centres in Cork and in Galway as well as expanding our existing Dublin centre."

"We are very happy to see the needs of these children acknowledged by Tusla and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs – and thank Minister Zappone for officially launching the service. I am thrilled to see more adopted children and teenagers in Ireland getting support through individual or group therapeutic work – new staff have been recruited with backgrounds in child psychotherapy, play therapy and social work, and they are ready to start meeting the children”.

Tusla CEO Pat Smyth: “Tusla is dedicated to the safety and wellbeing of children and families across Ireland. We are committed to providing permanency to all children who require the care of the state and recognise that children need lifelong connections, and supports to foster those relationships, in order to be given the best opportunity to grown up happy, safe and connected to the world around them."

"Today marks another step in that commitment to ensure children post adoption, still receive robust support to ensure that those essential relationships are strengthened and our commitment to support parents and children is steadfast.” 

Since 1977, Barnardos Post Adoption Service has provided a confidential, independent service to birth and adoptive families. It was expanded in 2007, with funding from TUSLA, to provide therapeutic services to internationally adopted children and their parents living in the Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow areas. This new expansion gives the service a national reach.

In addition, Barnardos Post Adoption Service has been funded by Tusla National Adoption Services to employ a psychotherapist to provide counselling services to adults who were incorrectly registered in their adoptive parent’s names.