Social workers have warned that what Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald called a “culture of referring on” will increase if mandatory reporting is made law.

State faces legal action over damning HSE report

An advocacy group for children in care has hit out at social workers for “failing” children following the Irish Examiner’s publication of HSE inspection reports of private children’s homes.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter reiterated that everyone, including priests, were obliged to report child sex abuse and other offences, including white collar crime, to the gardaí, even if they hear about it in the confessional.

More and more children are being taken into care due to families’ problems with drugs and alcohol addiction, according to the Frances Fitzgerald, the children’s minister.

Social workers in north Dublin say the welfare of their clients could be at risk if a plan to relocate them to a new office is implemented.

THE HSE is continuing to use unapproved foster carers for children who have been removed from their homes over child abuse or neglect fears.

AS MANY as 1,000 people offered jobs in key areas of the health service, including child protection, remain without a start date because of a “pause” in recruitment which the HSE has confirmed will last to the end of the year.

SOCIAL workers are to meet the Minister for Children later this month to address how new laws on the reporting of alleged child abuse will be covered in the face of increased workload.

THE state is paying private residential childcare companies in the region of €14,000 a week to look after individual children, while beds remain empty in homes run by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

AT-RISK children in Dublin cannot access emergency care beds through HSE social workers by day – and instead are being forced to routinely wait until 5pm when gardaí can intervene.

A LACK of weekend support for foster parents means they often end up having to supervise access visits with the children’s biological parents.

THE State is spending almost €90 million a year to keep about 400 children in residential care, at an average cost of €4,294 per child per week.

The Irish Association of Social Workers claims the Government needs to spell out in greater detail how the measures being put in place to provide an out-of-hours service for crisis cases will operate.