Report on child deaths in care to be published

CHILDREN’S Minister Frances Fitzgerald hopes to publish the report into the deaths of children known to the care system within the next month to eight weeks, provided the Attorney General does not raise any legal issues blocking its publication.

The report, carried out by the Independent Review into Deaths of Children in Care, was passed to the office of Ms Fitzgerald just before Christmas.

It is now with the Attorney General and Ms Fitzgerald said yesterday that if there are no legal impediments to publication she hoped to publish it by the end of the month or at some stage over the next eight weeks.

“It certainly would be my hope to have it [published] very early this year,” she said.

The report, which looks at the deaths of 196 children between the years 2000 and 2010, found that in 115 cases reviewed by the panel the cause of death was unnatural causes, ranging from suicide to drug overdose to accidents and killings.

The children whose files are reviewed within the report are not named but some relate to high-profile cases, such as that of Danny Talbot, who was 19 when he died in a homeless hostel in 2009.

His case is before the Dublin city coroner and his representatives have strongly criticised the HSE over what they argue were errors made regarding his care and the placement options open to him.

Other cases include that of Tracey Fay, who died in 2002 of a drug overdose. The HSE report into her death was published by Justice Minister Alan Shatter when he was on the opposition benches.

Ms Fitzgerald said the child deaths report would need to be reviewed to see whether some deaths were preventable.

The report — carried out by child law expert Geoffrey Shannon and the Barnardos head of advocacy Norah Gibbons — and which runs to hundreds of pages, is understood to also include criticism of the HSE over the initial delay in accessing some of the files relating to the children involved.

The Health Amendment Act 2010 was passed to facilitate the passing of documents from the HSE to the minister’s office and her predecessor, Barry Andrews, and they were then passed on to the review panel.

A separate review panel has been investigating deaths of those known to social care services since March 2010, during which time 35 young people have died.