HIQA should not be only monitoring group

IT IS a very serious thing to deprive a young person of their liberty for any period of time.

But if done well, it can surely only be beneficial for a troubled teenager whose behaviour is spiralling out of control.

Yesterday, the Irish Examiner revealed that young people are being sent to other countries for care.

Today we learn that more young people are being denied a place in a facility in this country than are given one.

What are our own secure special care units for if not to cater for troubled young people such as those being sent away?

If our own model of care is not good enough to handle some extreme cases, how does this bode for those who do get a place?

Something does not stack up.

While a recent Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) report said it was satisfied that “significant progress” had been made in our own three facilities — and most importantly outcomes for young people in special care were increasingly positive — the system needs to be probed further.

HIQA should not be the only organisation monitoring special care.

Unfortunately, the Children Acts Advisory Board (CAAB), which was monitoring decisions and tracking and tracing cases and their outcomes, has since been subsumed into the Office of the Minister for Children and does not have the remit it once did.

An excellent piece of research it carried out found that the committee in charge of making the decision on whether or not to admit a child was viewed as being secretive and without an appeals system.

The report found that not enough was known about the members of the committee which makes the decisions, and whether or not its decisions were unanimous.

The CAAB also tended to support a lot more of the applications than the committee did.

The fact that young people who are coming before the courts are often not considered for special care is also very worrying and an issue which Gordon Jeyes, HSE national director for children and family services, said he is going to tackle.

Children’s solicitor Gareth Noble maintains it is astonishing that one arm of the HSE — the social workers making the application — believe that a young person needs an intensive care placement, while another does not give it to them.

He said children are often precluded from special care if they are before the Children’s Court on criminal charges.

He does not have the authority to make an application for a placement.

So once again are those most in need are falling through the cracks?