Referendum will counter children’s ‘invisibility’
Geoffrey Shannon, who with Norah Gibbons of Barnardos formed the Independent Child Death Review Group, said if the referendum was passed it would also allow children in long-term foster care “a second chance” they do not enjoy under existing laws.
The report looked at 196 cases of children and young people who died while in or while known to care services between 2000 and 2010.
Yesterday Mr Shannon said the “invisibility” of those children would be countered were the Constitution changed in the referendum.
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore announced on Thursday the referendum would be a standalone ballot in theautumn. The wording has yet to be finalised but Mr Shannon, who is also chairman of the adoption board, said: “It will have major implications in child protection and the adoption area.”
He said an entire generation had grown up since the promise of a referendum was first made and that this week’s report highlighted both a failure to intervene in some child protection cases and a deference to parental rights.
“There were failures in the implementation of the legislation — that cannot be escaped from,” he told Morning Ireland.
“But also there was a framework. There was this perception that married parents had rights that prevented them from intervening.”
He said the threshold for intervention had been set “extraordinarily high” and the outcomes for some of those who featured in the report would have been different had the Constitution been different.
Referring to the large number of children in long-term foster care who cannot be adopted by their foster families under current laws, he said the referendum, if passed, would give them a second chance.
“They are locked in a twilight zone between a family that cannot fully care for them and a family that cannot fully have them,” he said.
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