HSE to complete children in care review by summer

THE HSE hopes to have completed a capacity review of some of its services for children in care by the summer, it emerged yesterday.

Gordon Jeyes, the recently-appointed national director for Children and Family Services, said the capacity review of alternative care arrangements for the small number of children who required special care placements was already under way, and that the results of that first phase would be available in a few months, with results from a review of the wider system following on from that.

He said a lot of money was spent on “special arrangements” for a small number of children who needed to be brought into the system for their own protection and for whom there was no places available, but he said he did not mind the cost as long as they were effective.

However, when they are not effective he said it was a “lose-lose” situation.

“I need to find out what are the most expensive placements and are we getting value for money, is that kid — not the system, not the society — is that kid getting a good service for that,” he said.

He also said there was a need for “an old fashioned child protection register”, particularly as there seemed to be geographical differences between some HSE regions when it came to the number of children in the child protection notification system, with the figures too small in some areas.

“I think there is too much evidence that suggests in some areas they keep a case as a welfare case rather than the compulsion of an order — ‘I’m sorry, this is your final warning’,” he said.

Mr Jeyes said in three of the HSE regions outside of Dublin the number of children in the child protection system was closer to 150, yet in Dublin the figure was around 758.

“That’s out of kilter,” he said. “So we need to design a gatekeeping so we intervene with the family with court approval in other ways, with compulsion up to a point where we have a clear and consistent register of compulsory support.”