HSE: Agencies must redouble efforts to support people in need
The health authority said it welcomed the report and would work strenuously towards implementing its recommendations.
“While the report acknowledges the difficulties for both the HSE and gardaí in preventing familicide, we must redouble our efforts to ensure all our community services are working together in supporting individuals and families in need,” it stated.
In a statement, the HSE said it had been working on programmes since 2007 that would result in the report’s recommendations as they relate to its areas of responsibility being implemented.
It said it would also support other agencies in implementing recommendations.
From early June, the health authority will operate an “expanded emergency place of safety” for children.
“This will enable gardaí to place children in an appropriate safe environment – in approved foster families – when they have to remove children from a situation of extreme risk outside of normal working hours,” the health authority said.
It was also developing a more integrated approach to out-of-hours services “within available resources”.
The HSE said it was building on existing GP, acute hospital and mental health services, to ensure people seeking services outside normal working hours could be provided with advice, information and, in emergency situations, had access to professionals working in mental health and suicide prevention.
It said a pilot project was also under way in Wexford involving a suicide crisis assessment nurse.
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy said he accepted the report’s finding but pointed out that the circumstances surrounding the tragedy were highly exceptional and posed considerable challenges to the personnel of all the agencies charged with responding to it.
He said the report’s findings would be used to refine their practices and procedures to complement the “Children First” guidelines that provide an essential framework for the gardaí and HSE in dealing with the “sensitive area” of child safety.
IMPACT trade union said out of hours services needed to be developed as a matter of urgency. It also expressed frustration that the HSE abandoned discussions with the union last year after a lengthy talks process because of a lack of resources to develop the service.
The Children’s Rights Alliance said the absence of an out-of-hours social service was a fundamental problem in the Monageer case and it was “telling” that it was the inquiry’s first recommendation.
The ISPCC said it was not the first time that such recommendations had been made, bringing to the forefront the ever present gaps in the country’s child protection system that had yet to be addressed.
The Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) general secretary, Des Kavanagh, said a lack of resources meant that mental health professionals were only able to respond to a person or family in crisis on a voluntary basis over night or over the weekend.
“If we are really serious about providing this service it ought to be provided on a rostered basis.”
