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Social workers’ concerns about children in care revealed in unpublished reports

By Jennifer Hough - Wednesday, May 26, 2010

THE Review of Adequacy of Child and Family Services is a statutory requirement under Section 8 of the Child Care Act, 1991.

The report outlines services and is supposed to highlight deficiencies.

However, the background information which go into compiling the main report is not for public consumption.

Unpublished reports from 2007, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal a litany of failures when it comes to child protection and children in care.

They revealed reams of concerns raised by social workers, none of which make the final review.

The detailed reports painstakingly prepared by Local Health Office (LHO) managers outline time and again what is going wrong with services, and provide a valuable insight into what is essentially a closed shop.

Concerned social and healthcare professionals who compiled the local area reports for the annual Review of Adequacy of Child and Family Services tell of unsafe practices, children at risk, social workers unable to deal with caseloads and non-implementation of statutory requirements – of which senior HSE management have been repeatedly told.

Since 2007, however, similar reports have not been possible to obtain, despite repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act from this newspaper.

Extracts from 2007 background reports in the Dublin area prepared for the annual review of adequacy of child and family reports:

Dublin North East:

Gaps in child protection services: Children are placed in whatever care type is available as there is not sufficient choice of placement to facilitate the matching of a child’s need with the placement. Placement breakdowns are not recorded or studied and they are not reported formally to the relevant committees in some LHOs. This means no analysis or understanding of placement breakdowns is being developed.

Identified gaps include treatment services for adolescent and adult sex offenders, underdeveloped domestic violence services, gaps in alternative care placements for adolescents with challenging behaviour, absence of a dedicated child sexual assessment team, plus long waiting times for child psychiatric and psychological services.

The absence of a dedicated aftercare budget was identified as hindering the provision of services to young people leaving the care of the HSE.

Dublin North

There is not yet a comprehensive range of family support services. There are geographical gaps and continued pressure on social work services which are unable to respond fully to child welfare referrals. There are waiting lists for social work and family support workers, there is a significant and largely unmet need for special needs assistants for children with behavioural or developmental difficulties to help them utilise nursery provisions. Services to support troubled teens in the community are also lacking as are dedicated counselling services to young people in north Dublin.

Dublin South

Gaps in the child protection services: Volume of referrals outstrip staff time to respond in an appropriate manner.

Long waiting periods remain for multidisciplinary assessments. Special needs assessments are also slow.

Psychology services are valuable and welcome to the area but also slow at times for parenting assessments.

Dublin West

Dublin West continues to be challenged by very high numbers of child protection referrals. This is related to the demographic make up of the area which places it very high on all levels of disadvantage. Child protection needs are high and the social work team has to prioritise the most serious cases with the staffing levels in place.

Dublin South Central

Within the staffing provision, it is not possible to staff child protection, alternative care and family support services to an optimum level. Therefore, not all children in care have allocated social workers. Not all foster carers have link workers. Priority is always given to the child "most in need". This leads to accusations of running a crisis service, which is not the case. Care planning, reviews, access, court appearances, are all given high priority. Adherence to statutory guidelines underpins all work in childcare services.

IrishExaminer.com - Thursday, February 09, 2012

Social workers’ concerns about children in care revealed in unpublished reports