Failure to respond quickly enough to cry for help

THE state’s child protection services are failing to respond quickly enough to cries for help from parents, research has revealed.

One woman used the metaphor of needing “a knife in your child’s back” to get attention.

Co-author of the report on service users’ perceptions of the Irish Child Protection System Dr Helen Buckley said a considerable degree of frustration was expressed by people who sought the intervention of the Health Service Executive (HSE) child protection services.