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.”

Asked if he would like to set a deadline, he said: “The next 12 months”, adding that the only instances where overseas placements should be required were if there was a “specific critical issue” such as for psychiatric reasons that cannot be addressed by services here.

In recent years a number of children and teenagers have been sent overseas on placements. Last year, it was revealed that in 2008, the cost of sending nine young people out of the state for treatment to locations in Britain, and Nebraska in the US, cost €2.2 million, or almost €250,000 per child.

He also stressed that the promised 200 additional social workers to be appointed, as recommended in the Ryan Report, will be new positions above those already in the system. “The resources we need are the staff on the ground and we, everybody on board, going in the same direction and working together.”

A new way of processing cases, called the Differential Response Mechanism, is being piloted in Dublin north and is likely to be completed soon. It is based on a model used in the US state of Minnesota and would see the majority of cases referred to family support services.

Mr Garland said this was a way of reviewing “how we do what we do, and getting the best way of doing it”.

The seminar, held in University College Dublin, also heard from Children’s Minister, Barry Andrews, who admitted that changes were necessary within the HSE when it came to dealing with vulnerable children.

Real time data was vital, he said, although Mr Garland admitted later that industrial relations difficulties have stymied the collation of data in certain parts of the country. Mr Andrew said that standardised processes for formulising care plans and allowing equal access to services was needed, and would be achieved.

Referring to the upcoming publication of a report into abuse within a west of Ireland family expected to detail failings at health board level, he said: “We are going to have a very tough year.”