Deaths of children in care report due this month: Fitzgerald

A report into the deaths of children in care over a 10-year period will be published before the end of the month, Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said yesterday.

The report, conducted by Child Rapporteur and child law expert Geoffrey Shannon and Barnardos director of advocacy Norah Gibbons, is completed and has been with the attorney general in recent months.

It is understood concerns had been raised over whether the report could be published in its completed format because of the identification of children and young people known to the care services who had died.

Yesterday Ms Fitzgerald explained she had been working with the attorney general on the issue and said: “I will publish it before the end of the month. I have got legal advice that it can be published. I was determined it would be published in the interests of transparency and learning lessons from these tragic cases and it will be published before the end of the month.”

Work on the report began in May 2010 following revelations of 196 cases of children known to care services having in the previous decade. The report is expected to be highly critical of the HSE and the shortcomings in the child protection and welfare systems that allowed some young people to slip through cracks in the system. It comes just a month after the independently chaired National Review Panel published details of cases dating from 2010 and revealed that 46 young people in or known to care services had died since the start of 2010.

There have been increasing calls for aftercare to be placed on a statutory footing, although in response to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil children’s spokesman Charlie McConalogue, Ms Fitzgerald was unable to say how much such a mandatory aftercare policy for those aged over 18 would cost.

There were 1,310 young people were in receipt of aftercare at the end of last month and Ms Fitzgerald said an intra-agency National Aftercare Implementation Group was monitoring the new aftercare policy set out in Apr 2011.

Speaking at the launch of new figures on school attendance rates published by the National Education Welfare Board Ms Fitzgerald also said that a referendum on enshrining the rights of the child in the Constitution would be held later this year, although a date had yet to be finalised.

She also raised her ongoing concerns over the lack of standardised data within the child welfare system, but said that work on the introduction of the long-awaited National Children Information System was “progressing”.