HSE: No child to be sent abroad for care by next year

NO Irish child should be sent overseas for general care placements from 12 months time, a senior official with the HSE said yesterday.

Speaking after an event to mark the fourth World Social Work Day, Phil Garland, assistant national director for children and families social services, also said there were “huge deficits in how we manage ourselves” within the HSE, but that this was changing.

“The reality is that in the future we should not need to send children out of the state, we should have the services in the best way, but we need to get the frontline services and also to actually reduce the number of those critical situations which take places down the line.”