Radical reform needed of services for troubled teens

FOR more than 10 years the Irish Examiner has been reporting on the problems of a special care unit for troubled teenage girls just outside Cork.

Since it opened in 1996, Gleann Alainn, on the grounds of St Stephen’s psychiatric hospital in Glanmire, has, on and off, been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Usually, the stories involve girls “breaking out” of the supposedly secure unit. Once, four girls stole a car and drove to Galway. Other times, the stories are about damage to the property caused by the girls.