Gardaí seek to meet Andrews over care fears

GARDAÍ have sought a meeting with Minister for Children Barry Andrews to discuss their ongoing concerns about “not being trained or resourced to act as virtual social workers” to children who require out-of-hours emergency foster care placements.

For the past year, gardaí have been charged with finding an “appropriate place of safety for children found to be at risk out of hours” under the HSE’s Emergency Place of Safety (EPS) service. In most of the country, gardaí are charged with contacting a private foster care agency, Five Rivers Ireland, but in Dublin, Kildare and Wickow, they can contact a skeleton staff of out-of-hours HSE social workers.

According to the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI), the present system means that terrified children can end up spending hours in a Garda station awaiting placement. “We are literally left holding the baby,” said AGSI National Executive member Sergeant Willie Gleeson.

The AGSI says that due to the system outside Dublin, “gardaí have effectively become the lead agency in the provision of emergency care placements”.

“This is not a one-off situation. It is every night and so this is much more than an emergency service. We have no problem coming to the aid of the HSE and the Department of Health in an emergency but this isn’t an emergency. We do not have the training for this nor are we equipped with the resources to do this kind of work,” he said.

Under the EPS service a referral is made to gardaí and a garda, if he or she believes “there is an immediate and serious risk to the health or welfare of a child”, must invoke Section 12 of the 1991 Childcare Act if they believe that the risk is too high to wait for a HSE emergency care order.

They can then contact the Five Rivers Agency which has up to 10 emergency beds for children around the country.

“The EPS was not meant to be a long-term solution to the lack of out-of-hours social workers. It was supposed to kick-start a proper out-of-hours service but there is no move by the HSE to start that process,” said Sergeant Gleeson.

The EPS service operates from 5pm-9am, Monday to Friday, and at weekends and on bank holidays. It was put in place as a response to the Monageer tragedies where concerns about a family of four could not be addressed as there were no social workers in place over the weekend. By the time Monday came, the whole family had died.