HSE in scandal over 188 child deaths

AN AVERAGE of 18 children per year have died over the past 10 years while being supported by or having just finished contact with social services, the HSE has admitted.

These figures have been described as “shocking” by Fine Gael’s spokesman on children, Alan Shatter, who said it was a “scandal” that 84 of these 188 children suffered “unnatural deaths” that went uninvestigated by the HSE.

Ever since an independent inquiry into the deaths of children in care was set up, and then 17-year-old Daniel McAnaspie’s body was found in Co Meath, the HSE has been under pressure to release these figures.

Last night they revealed that 151 young people, from babies up to age 21, who were either having ongoing contact with social services, had just finished contact or had moved into an 18- to 21-year-old aftercare mode, had died since 2000.

This figure is in addition to the announcement last Friday that 37 children had died over the past 10 years while in the “official care of the HSE” or health boards.

Of the 151 deaths, 84 children died from unnatural causes while 67 died from natural causes, including brain tumours, heart disease, sudden infant death and leukaemia.

Furthermore, 124 of the children were active social work cases or recently closed social work cases.

The remaining 27 were young people, aged 18-21, who had left official state care on their 18th birthday.

Over the past 10 years, 200,000 children were referred to child protection services and 20,000 of these were later recorded as having child protection needs.

The HSE has blamed its failure to collate these figure up to now on its “lack of national standard for notifying deaths of children in care or deaths of children known to child protection services”.

They say that the Health Information Quality Authority has now put such guidance in place and, as of last March, all such deaths will be fully recorded.

“The HSE takes its responsibilities in relation to child protection very seriously and is committed to continuing to develop the services we provide to children and families as part of our ongoing reform programme. We are also committed to learning from shortcomings that are identified through reviews and reports into our services to improve services for children and families into the future,” a spokesman said.

An independent review group, made up of solicitor Geoffrey Shannon and Barnardos director of advocacy Norah Gibbons, will review these 188 cases.

The group was established in March but only got these figures and details last night.

“The HSE is seeking to facilitate them in their work in every way possible. We look forward to the introduction of legislation by the Government which will facilitate the HSE in handing over child care files to the Independent Review Group.

“In the intervening period we will continue to explore every possible avenue open to us in assisting them with their work,” he said.

Last night, the HSE argued that the deaths of children were approximately in line with similar OFSTED statistics in Britain and child protection figures in New York, where 68% of such child deaths are due to “unnatural causes”.

Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay said it was a “tragedy and a disgrace” that 61 of these 151 children had died from unnatural causes. “It potentially points to significant failures on behalf of the system to properly assess the risk to children and take the appropriate action to keep them safe.”