Two children in care were forced to urinate on the floor of an isolation unit and another had to wash with baby wipes for four days after being denied access to bathrooms, health watchdogs have found.

An inspection of the Ballydowd Special Care Centre has found children there now find it “normal” that a metal detector is used during body searches, while other children said they felt they had “lost the ability to make a cup of tea”.

Irish Examiner journalist Noel Baker was last night presented with a merit accolade in the daily newspapers category of the Justice Media Awards.

The Child and Family Agency, Tusla, has said 11 students in different residential care settings are sitting the state examinations this month.

A draft report compiled on behalf of the Department of Children and the HSE two years ago highlighted problems of staff vacancies and high absenteeism within Ireland’s secure care system and also recommended phasing out overseas placements.

On the second day of the ‘Irish Examiner’ series looking at the placement of Irish children overseas, Noel Baker visits Ballydowd, the country’s top special care centre, and Kibble in Scotland. Supported by the Mary Raftery Fund.

On the second day of the ‘Irish Examiner’ series looking at the placement of Irish children overseas, Noel Baker visits Ballydowd, the country’s top special care centre, and Kibble in Scotland. Supported by the Mary Raftery Fund

The State spent almost €17m last year keeping 27 troubled children in specialised residential care.

The security bill for Kerry General Hospital for the first nine months of 2012 was almost 10 times the cost of security services at Cork University Hospital.

A 15-year-old boy in care whose weight has ballooned to 19st may have been prescribed medication for a condition he might not have, the High Court heard yesterday.

Staff are virtually powerless to stop troubled teenagers from absconding from special care units with many simply walking away, according to internal documents.

More than 100 staff at the country’s three special care units for troubled teens have racked up a combined 14,000 sick leave days over the past three years, figures obtained by the Irish Examiner show.

FOR more than 10 years the Irish Examiner has been reporting on the problems of a special care unit for troubled teenage girls just outside Cork.

A HIGH COURT judge has suggested he may visit facilities in Britain being used for referrals from the Irish care system.

A SCOTTISH facility for seriously troubled youths which had previously taken referrals from the HSE is no longer going to do so as it needs the beds for its own young people.

MORE than one-third of the staff working at a secure centre for troubled teenagers are agency staff — a practice that has been heavily criticised by the Health and Information Quality Authority (HIQA).

A TEENAGER was left “institutionalised” and unfit for mainstream education after being detained in a controversial children’s care facility, a court has heard.

A 15-year-old boy was left “institutionalised” and unfit for mainstream education after he was detained in a controversial children's care facility, a court heard today.

SIGNIFICANT failings in the management and staffing of special care units are compromising the state’s capacity to meet the needs of the vulnerable children they house, a report has found.

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).

THE HSE’s standards watchdog this week published four comprehensive reports on special care units where troubled teenagers are detained in order to provide them with therapeutic interventions.

THE controversial Ballydowd residential care facility for children should be closed according to an inspections watchdog which said conditions there had worsened since a HSE U-turn on an initial plan to shut it down last year.

Health watchdogs today ordered the closure of two special care units for disruptive teenagers over safety concerns.

IF you are not part of the solution, then maybe you are part of the problem.

HSE special care units are failing more than half of the troubled children who have been placed there, according to a report which raises serious questions about the HSE’s capacity to help vulnerable young people in care.

NO replacement beds have been provided for troubled teenagers requiring secure care following the closure of the state’s main special care unit last year.

THE appalling inadequacy of facilities for troubled teenagers in this benighted country is starkly underlined by today’s disturbing revelation that no service has yet been provided to fill the void left by the closure of the state’s main secure unit.

The High Court has further extended the detention of a 14-year-old boy with a history of violence and inappropriate sexualised behaviour who has been at a special care facility for children since the weekend pending his proposed transfer to a special unit in Scotla

SOCIAL care workers are “walking on eggshells” and feel they cannot respond in a normal and natural way to children’s needs due to the increasingly strict guidelines they must adhere to.

TWO care homes for children run by the HSE continue to operate despite numerous warnings from independent inspectors that neither is fit for purpose.

Children's charities say they are seriously concerned about the findings of a Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) report on the Special Care Unit in Ballydowd, west Dublin.

CONVENIENCE food replaced home cooking and there was no cleaning or housekeeping carried out in a home for troubled children during an industrial relations dispute.

CONVENIENCE food replaced home cooking and there was no cleaning or housekeeping carried out in a home for troubled children during an industrial relations dispute.

A chronic alcoholic and drug addict has been given a consecutive six-and-a-half years sentence to start at the end of a recently imposed two years term.

A BOY was found dead, having apparently taken his own life, some four days after the High Court had made an order that he be immediately placed in secure residential care on grounds that he was considered to be seriously at risk, it emerged yesterday.

CONCERNS were raised by a state agency that teenagers needing mental health services are being detained by court order in a locked facility simply because they can’t access help elsewhere.

The State is spending almost €30 million a year on specialised care for 72 disturbed young people. The main issue in relation to this should not be the cost, but whether proper treatment is being provided.

A man who drove a van into a teenager during a drug-induced psychosis and claimed he did it because the victim gave him the ‘evil eye’ has been given a 12-month suspended sentence and an 18-month driving ban at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

A Health board today had a 14-year-old boy moved from a high-support unit in Dublin to a therapeutic centre in Northern Ireland because it did not want to put its own staff at risk.

TWO-THIRDS of beds at a centre for the State’s most troubled children remain unfilled, but staff and management say huge progress is being made at the troubled facility.

A SPECIAL care unit for disturbed children, which was built following a 1998 High Court order to the State authorities, is not designed to meet their needs, the unit’s manager told the court yesterday.

ALLOWING unqualified and inexperienced staff look after the country's most vulnerable children will increase the risk of violence to workers and young people at the Ballydowd centre, union officials warned yesterday.

THE country’s only secure facility for troubled teenagers has been severely criticised by State inspectors.