HSE care of children ‘unacceptable’

CHILDREN in a care home run by the Health Service Executive (HSE) — including one child whose home it has been for the past 10 years — are being housed in unacceptable conditions, according to the health watchdog.

The HSE was warned two years ago by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) that it needed to upgrade the rented premises, a semi-detached house in a housing estate in a Co Meath coastal town. However, the HSE failed to act on the 2008 recommendation and has now told HIQA there are no plans to invest in it, because the proposal is to amalgamate it with another home. However, the HSE could not say when this might happen.

HIQA said young people received “an important message from the environment in which they live about how they are valued” and that the HSE needed to give “urgent attention to the physical condition of the centre”.

The 2008 report had highlighted the need to replace windows and refit the bathroom and kitchen.

In a separate inspection in April 2010 of a care home in Dublin North East, last inspected four years ago, young people said they had little confidence in the complaints procedure. One young person said they would not bother making a complaint because it “would not get past the office desk”.

HIQA found some aspects of the care commendable, but said systems related to child protection requirements needed improvement.

“There were several child protection concerns in the year prior to inspection, and these were not recorded in the child protection sections of the young people’s files,” the inspectors said.

They also said that staff did not have a clear understanding of what was a complaint as opposed to an allegation. The same concern was expressed by HIQA in relation to staff at a second care home in North East Dublin, where one child had made a serious allegation about a staff member which took nearly a year to resolve. None on the staff, including the person against whom the allegation was made, were interviewed.

The child who made the allegation had “displayed sexualised behaviours and spoken in a manner about sexual acts that were not age appropriate”, HIQA said.

The same child assaulted other children in the centre and while the assaults were reported to the child’s social worker, inspectors were “unclear” as to how the assaults had been dealt with.

On a positive note, inspectors found the home was well managed on a day-to-day basis, and had a committed, resilient and motivated team.

However, inspectors were concerned that one young person in need of psychological assessment had not been facilitated, despite a request by their social worker four months previously.