Report on children given cool response

A LANDMARK report urging radical reform of services for at-risk children was given a cool response when laid before government.

The long-awaited report of the Task Force on Child Care Services was finally finished in September 1980 — six years after the government-appointed task force was set up — and it ran to many hundreds of pages, making recommendations for substantial changes in the way the State cared for children in need of support outside the home.

As the previous year had been International Year of the Child, a commitment was made to appoint the country’s first children’s minister and Tom Hussey was made minster of state with special responsibility for children in 1980.

Apart from that, however, it seems the government of the day had little interest in acting on the task force’s recommendations. Notes for a cabinet meeting on October 17, 1980 state: “This report contravenes a basic principle on the organisation of Government services which, according to one of the oldest rules in the game, cannot be organised to serve particular groups eg children, old people, the unemployed etc, and at the same time serve particular purposes like, for example, looking after health and welfare generally, the environment, etc.

“It contains no estimate what the likely cost of the recommendations would be. It recommends allowances to the wives of low income families, without, apparently, reference to the children’s allowances systems.

“It proposes an elaborate bureaucratic structure to look after what is essentially a family problem — a national child council, a child care authority, the accompaniment of welfare officers with a ‘child care worker’ when visiting etc.”

It was agreed, however, that the report should be made public, but, another note a few days later remarks: “The Minister [Health Minster Michael Woods] wishes to emphasise that agreement to publication of the report would not be taken as commitment to the recommendations and views which it contains.”

Discussions followed on the press statement to accompany the release of the report and they reveal concerns that the Labour Party was making “strong noises about introducing a Children’s Bill.”

“There is of course the danger that, unless there is some firm commitment by the Government in the statement, then the opposition parties will be free to ‘lift’ certain of the proposals contained in the report and to sponsor a Private Members Bill.”

The Government did give a commitment to introducing a Children’s Bill. But it was 1987 before the new Children Act came into effect, finally abolishing the concept of illegitimacy and other discriminations, and it was 1989 before another Children Act gave the health boards substantial powers to care for children.