HSE may have to investigate more child deaths

MORE child deaths may have to be investigated by the Health Service Executive (HSE) than those already confirmed.

Children’s Minister Barry Andrews has conceded the 23 deaths of children in the care of the state investigated over the past 10 years, plus a number of investigations that are still ongoing, may not be the final tally.

He has asked the HSE to validate the figures provided so far and to check if there are other cases that should have been investigated.

An independent review panel, the Child Death Review Group, will examine the case files to ensure the investigations were thorough and transparent. “What we have decided to do is ask the HSE for completeness to make sure that there are no other cases that might be appropriate for scrutiny for this independent panel,” Mr Andrews said.

The minister told the Dáil last Thursday in the wake of the controversy over the report into the death of teenage mother-of-two Tracey Fay that reports on 23 other deaths had yet to be published.

He said yesterday, however, that under new investigation guidelines to be published by health and social services inspection body, HIQA, today, the definition of what constituted the death of a child in care would be expanded.

“HIQA will announce that we are, in future, going to investigate cases that will include individuals that are not in care but are known to the child protection system.

“We are expanding – in future we are going to be much more inclusive and to try to follow that inclusiveness principle, we are asking the HSE to look back to see if there is anybody that would belong in that category that was not included in the case list that was provided to me on Thursday morning.

“In some cases people that are 18, 19, 20 [years of age] who are not children but they have a care history. We are like any parent – we want to know what went wrong, why they took their own lives or why they died.

“Equally if there is somebody who is known to the child protection system but is not actually in foster care or residential care, we want to know what went wrong there as well.”

The Children’s Rights Alliance welcomed the minister’s move to establish the Child Death Review Group but said it should become a permanent body which automatically investigated all deaths in care. The alliance, which represents 90 voluntary bodies working with children, said there was an urgent need to restore public confidence in the state’s child protection and care systems. “Dealing with past cases is of critical importance. However, the minister must now prove his mettle by putting in place a robust mechanism to investigate, and learn from, any future child deaths,” said chief executive Jillian van Turnhout.