Child rights too vital to be left to tender mercies of HSE bureaucrats

PROFESSOR Brendan Drumm epitomised the worst aspects of public administration late last week.

The HSE boss was being asked to explain why his organisation had failed to release files of child deaths for 12 weeks to an independent review committee. He went out of his way to reiterate that he wouldn’t countenance breaking the law to release information.

He added it was the bending of regulations that had caused many of our contemporary problems. What an affront – trying to use the failure of our disastrous light touch financial regulation to justify the HSE putting its own preservation ahead of the protection of children.

How can he seriously argue that allowing Geoffrey Shannon and Barnardos’ Norah Gibbons access to information on the deaths of children and young adults was in some way a danger? It was only a danger to the HSE’s credibility.

Further truths will emerge tomorrow as the death toll of children over the decade rises. The March figure of 23 has risen to 37. This grim statistic is under the narrowest definition of the 1991 Childcare Act. It is minimalist. It excludes former clients and those in contact with the childcare services, but not in their direct care. The eventual tally is somewhere between the published figure and a couple of hundred.

Amnesty International has highlighted that 444 children are recorded as missing, having entered the Irish state over the same decade.

The first golden rule of career civil servants is taught to them early – CYA. This ‘Cover Your Ass’ philosophy seeks not only to protect the individual but the system. They would have you believe it is also there to protect the minister. The compilation of statistics shouldn’t be a matter for the HSE at all. The care provider is conflicted as regulator.

It is not clear what function the Department of Health now fulfils, given that the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) is there to monitor HSE performance. The case for the Department of Health officially to compile childcare statistics, with direct accountability to the Dáil, is unanswerable. Only the threat of emergency legislation and a showdown with the Taoiseach made the latest information available.

This latest episode is a serious humiliation for the Minister for Children, Barry Andrews. He is well spoken and genuinely motivated. Increasingly, he is perceived as an almost irrelevant bystander or legal bluffer. At least, he fronts up to the media, whereas Mary Harney, with full cabinet rank, has deliberately absented herself from childcare controversy. We have to face the painful truth that modern Ireland has a sub-culture of youth that has been discarded and damaged beyond repair.

Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan has chronicled the dysfunctional nature of the HSE childcare services. She and her colleague Emily O’Reilly have a legal entitlement of access to individual files. This statutory obligation has not been met uniformly. A turf war has existed between local former health board bureaucrat barons and their childcare directorate bosses such as Phil Garland.

This impasse has resulted in inconsistency in the application of the release of files. No clear pattern for recording young adult deaths exists throughout the country. The Irish state claims agency, Irish Public Bodies Mutual Insurance, which may process any claims against the state, hasn’t been given the full information to date.

The full horror of our society’s failings is embodied in the narrative of state childcare. The most vulnerable kids end up homeless. They become immersed in drug and substance abuse and can ultimately end up in juvenile crime. The depth of the problem is worsening each year. More than 8,000 cases were before the Children’s Court last year. Endemic youth crime is becoming more violent with broken glass, baseball bats and assorted knives. Repeat offences are commonplace.

The nature of the 9am-to-5pm, Monday-to-Friday care services results in the most difficult teenagers being placed in adult mental hospital wards and prisons.

The past year has been taken up with the revelation of the full horror of the Ryan and Murphy reports. These have chronicled clerical and religious congregation abuse of the most sadistic kind.

Just when we were punch drunk from anecdotes and examples of buggery andviolence, we find our current state childcare has even more damaging outcomes. Church leaders have been decried for legalistic defences rather than compassion. The HSE has followed suit.

We need a national debate on parenting. Beyond any employment, the most difficult role for an adult is to be a decent mum or dad. There is no rulebook. You have to do the best you can as you learn on the job, from your mistakes. The full responsibility of parents is not being addressed squarely. Children are not born guilty, they are reared. The key universal lessons of childcare are: the primacy of early intervention; the role of the extended family (grandparents, aunts, etc) and the optimum alternative care of foster parents. The strengths and weaknesses of our support systems need to be honestly addressed with current resource constraints. Even in this context, it should be noted that the annual cost of a child in institutional care is €250,000.

To confront this crisis we must start with honesty. Parents are put to the pin of their collar to look after their own kids with the present state of the economy, negative equity and income reductions. Their sense of personal responsibility is narrowing rather than extending.

THE new boss of the HSE, Cathal Magee, was apparently third choice behind the external candidates Tom Keane and Mike Read. Let’s hope he doesn’t go native too early. He should deal with the media on the basis of openness and a commitment to do his best. The failings of our childcare system are not just the fault of the HSE, but they can only be further undermined by trying to sweep the full horror under the carpet. The Department of Health should stop running the health service by alibi, seeking a buffer between them and responsibility. The Minister for Children must be of full cabinet rank.

The Oireachtas Committee on Children’s Rights reached all-party agreement on the wording of a constitutional amendment. The Tánaiste had told the Dáil that Barry Andrews was due to bring a memorandum to Government for the holding of a referendum by the end of this month. This has now been deferred apparently because it may oblige the Government to hold the three by-elections. If this political pragmatism is true, it neatly sums up our childcare priorities – fundamental reform is subject to party political expediency.

Whose interests were served by Drumm and the HSE’s obfuscation and obstruction? The use of in-camera proceedings as a basis for the restriction on information is a convenient excuse to avoid transparency. The time for trust is over. The care of children is too sensitive to leave to individual discretion of cleric or bureaucrat. We need to enshrine children’s rights in our constitution and place the Children First guidelines on a statutory footing. There are no quick fixes or easy answers, but the law must be unambiguously on the side of the vulnerable kids.