Only 10 families recruited for emergency care

FEWER than 10 families have been recruited nationally under a new out-of-hours safety service to provide emergency foster care for children at risk – two years after a Co Wexford father orchestrated the deaths of his family.

Instead of a nationwide out-of-hours social work service to respond to emergency child protection cases, the HSE has come up with a number of less costly alternatives, including out-of-hours emergency foster placements.

The “emergency place of safety service” will be provided by families recruited by Five Rivers, a private foster care agency awarded the contract last December following an EU tender process. To date a family has been recruited in each of the following locations: Kildare, Cork city and county, Portlaoise, Longford, Galway, Donegal and Sligo/Leitrim.

An out-of-hours service already exists in counties Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Mayo.

Last night, a spokesperson for the HSE said the idea behind the service was to “have families within a 50km radius from anywhere in the country” where children might be at risk.

The families recruited by Five Rivers will provide emergency placements ranging from 48 hours to three nights.

The HSE spokesperson said the new safety service would mean instead of children at risk being brought to the nearest acute hospital on foot of Garda intervention, they would be placed with families. She said they planned to roll the service out further shortly.

The spokesperson said 25 children were brought to Wexford General Hospital last year after gardaí took them into safety.

Details of the “emergency place of safety service” emerged following the publication on Tuesday of the Monageer report – which examined the circumstances surrounding the deaths of a young family of four. In the report, Adrian Dunne, 29, was described as the “driving force” behind the death of his wife, Ciara, 24, and his two young daughters, Leanne and Shania.

The report highlighted a litany of failures by social services and gardaí to adequately address concerns around the family in the days before their deaths in April 2007. It also criticised the absence of a comprehensive service to deal with emergency child protection cases out-of-hours.

Under the “emergency place of safety service”, there is a central control system with one single contact point nationally, accessible to gardaí from 5pm to 9am on weekdays and from 5pm Friday to 9am Monday on weekends, public and bank holidays.

The HSE said it had taken a number of steps to improve services on the ground since the Monageer tragedy, including a SCAN or Suicide Crisis Assessment Service. However, this is still operating on a pilot basis and consists of just one nursing post. The service is only available weekdays from 9am-5pm. A HSE spokesperson said the service will be expanded to weekends from next month.

The HSE is also looking at extending the service to 8pm and rolling it out across Co Wexford. However, the spokesperson was unable to say how this expanded service could be provided in light of a staff recruitment embargo.

The HSE also plans to expand the hours of service of a liaison mental health nurse at Wexford General Hospital from next month.