Report on agency for children ‘a major step’
Launching the blueprint published by the task force on the Child and Family Support Agency yesterday, Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said it represented a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to overhaul the child welfare system.
The task force was chaired by Maureen Lynott and also included representatives from NGOs, government departments, and Gordon Jeyes, the national director of the HSE’s Children and Family Services.
It has recommended the appointment of a transition committee to oversee the changes. Ms Fitzgerald said this could “not happen overnight”.
However, Ms Lynott said staffing could be found within existing services.
Mr Jeyes said services would be provided at local level by multi-disciplinary teams, a move away from the regional model which already exists.
Proposals for the agency will be considered before the plans are finalised and implemented, which will require legislation.
Ms Fitzgerald said 17 major statutory reports on child protection failings in Ireland had been carried out since 1980.
The most recent — the Gibbons Shannon report into deaths of children known to care services — had shown in one stance, 15 different agencies were involved with one young person who later died.
“It is very clear that child and family services have not been priorities, as they should have been,” Ms Fitzgerald said.
The report was a “major step” towards the proper coordination of services she said. “It also deals with the accountability and transparency issues that have been highlighted [in other reports].”
Ms Lynott said past errors were exacerbated by the extent of the failures which occurred, but she said those failures were not due to social workers: “They have not been able to work properly because of the silos and diluted accountability to date,” she said.
Consultation and legislation will be needed before the model can begin delivering the services as outlined in the report.
However, it stressed that in many instances if the recommendations are not implemented it would mean opportunities to improve services for children an families would be missed.
Ineke Durville of the Irish Association of Social Workers said: “It would be hard to find fault with anything they are proposing — it is potentially an interesting development.”
However, she said there were already shortfalls in the child welfare protection services including a “huge lack of resources locally” and more detail would be needed on extra resources and the redeployment of existing resources before a complete view of the service could be formed.
* Read the full report on www.dcya.gov.ie
* Under the report of the task force charged with mapping how the new Children and Family Service will work, multidisciplinary teams will bring local services under one local manager with direct lines of command to a centralised office under Gordon Jeyes, current Child and Family Services director.
The agency will be accountable to the minister, or as the report puts it: “The CFSA is located within the DCYA. The CEO reports to the minister via the secretary general.”
Its budget has yet to be decided but the report mentions the existing budget of €550m dedicated to this area in the HSE estimates. The report recommends that some personnel be brought in to oversee the transition of services to the CFSA, but otherwise the plan is to co-ordinate existing staff into the new structure.
