Ashdale Care Quality Report 2025: A Year of Growth, Quality and Partnership

Ashdale Care is pleased to present its fourth Annual Quality Report, reflecting another year of strong regulatory performance, continued growth and deepened partnership working across the sector. This report provides an honest and comprehensive account of how we continue to deliver high quality, regulated care to some of the most vulnerable children and young people in Ireland, often within increasingly complex and high acuity contexts.

2025 was a milestone year for Ashdale Care, with the opening of six newly registered homes, bringing total capacity to 115 registered beds nationwide by the end of December. This represents not just growth in scale, but growth in capability, alongside continued development of specialist therapeutic placements supported by our in-house therapeutic supports.

We achieved excellent inspection results with all homes registered without conditions, reaffirming our focus on maintaining the highest possible standards while supporting young people with complexity. A significant area of continued progress in 2025 relates to safety and outcomes, including an 86% reduction in the average number of incidents per home since 2020, reflecting consistent application of our CARE model and strengthened leadership. Ashdale Care also became the first organisation in Europe to achieve CARE Fidelity certification with Cornell University.

Throughout the year, we experienced positive and ongoing collaboration with Tusla’s National Placement Team (NPT) and SCSIP team, ensuring timely, appropriate and well supported placements for children and young people. This included renewal of our multi-year SLA for enhanced homes with Ashdale Care remaining the only provider of scale in this space as of December 2025.

Our engagement with Tusla remained constructive and forward-looking, focusing on shared challenges across the system including growing demand, workforce pressures and the need for services capable of supporting children with complex needs. We also worked closely with ACIMS in relation to staffing profiles, supporting the approval of a national pilot project for Level 5 and Level 6 roles, now successfully trialled across two homes.

Investment in our people remained a key priority, including pay increases, manager bonuses, enhanced leave and the continued success of our Leadership Academy, with 60 graduates and strong feedback on training and coaching. This commitment is reflected in our staff survey and the professionalism and dedication shown across our teams, including recognition such as Drumbenagh House being awarded Team of the Year at the CRS Awards.

We also strengthened our organisational capacity through new senior appointments, including a Director of Infrastructure and Sustainability and a Chief People Officer. Company-wide celebrations and sector engagement including participation at the Unity Conference reflected a strong sense of community across the organisation.

2025 also marked the launch of Ashdale Care’s Five Year Strategic Plan 2026–2031, setting out our ambition to grow sustainably, deepen our expertise and extend our impact in supporting children and young people across Ireland.

Read the full Ashdale Care Quality Report 2025 to learn more about our services, outcomes and future plans.