Bill ignores incest report proposals

A TOP child law expert has claimed the Government is ignoring the recommendations from the Roscommon incest case report in a new bill “designed to silence ‘troublesome’ voices” of children in legal proceedings.

Catherine Ghent said elements of the Child Care (Amendment) Bill would suppress children’s voices in court cases through its proposals on the appointment of Guardian Ad Litems, who represent children in court.

She said: “The bill proposes an unprecedented assault on the principle of equality of arms, to give untrained and sometimes disinterested District Court judges the power to rule on whether or not a guardian ad litem should have legal representation and to direct what their legal representatives can or cannot do. It further provides a statutory basis for a guardian ad litem to be held liable for costs incurred by the HSE in child care proceedings.

“Let us not delude ourselves that the HSE, courts and parents always act in the best interests of children. Given that there is no correlative curtailing of the rights of the HSE or parents, a cynic might conclude that the section has been designed to silence ‘troublesome’ voices. As a solicitor acting on behalf of some of the state’s most vulnerable children, it is my view that to proceed to enact a section which will facilitate the suppression of children’s voices, renders recent commitments to listen to the voices of children meaningless.”

She added that she supported provisions that would mean children who have criminal charges can no longer be excluded from special care on that basis alone.

Meanwhile, the HSE has said it is close to fully implementing the recommendations of a controversial report it was accused of burying earlier this year. In April Fine Gael published a Strategic Review of the Delivery and Management of Children and Family Services, carried out by PA Consulting for the HSE. It was completed last December and outlines a series of problems within the childcare system and makes a number of recommendations.

However, it only came to light when it was published by Fine Gael Justice spokesman Alan Shatter. Titled ‘Inspiring Confidence in Children and Family Services — Putting Children First and Meaning It’, it set out a number of problems in the child support sector, including describing collaboration between services and agencies as “uneven and for the most part unacceptable from the perspective of the child”, and claiming there were “strong anxieties” that the needs of children are secondary to the needs of a delivery system beset by under-developed supports for social workers and their managers.

A year on from the submission of the draft report, the HSE said work was continuing on implementing the recommendations.

It said that, to date, it had established the National Office for Children and Families and a childcare steering group and consists of the national director, the four regional directors of operations (RDOs), the four lead local health managers, and communications.

The HSE also said each region has established a regional steering group to coordinate the regional implementation and had held workshops in the four HSE regions “with senior child care personnel culminating in a consolidation workshop with representatives from throughout the country to implement the PA Report”.

Some 192 of the promised 200 new social workers, as recommended by the Ryan Report, are in place, the HSE said, adding that further steps are being taken to shore up the childcare area.

“The HSE is progressing a new National Child Care Information System, with agreed standardised business processes, and will move to procurement stage in 2011,” said a spokesperson.