Delay to national child-risk register

A national register of children at risk accessible to gardaí and medical personnel 24/7 will not be available before the end of the year despite its significance in supporting child protection.

Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, had planned to extend access to a national register of children with a Child Protection Plan to GPs, hospitals and the gardaí in 2014, but has confirmed to the Irish Examiner that it will be the end of 2015 before the system is provided.

The Child Notification Protection System (CPNS) will allow doctors in emergency departments, GPs and gardaí to find out if a child has been deemed to be at risk of significant harm.

Under this system they will be able to call a dedicated out-of-hours service to access the database.

Tusla chief executive Gordon Jeyes told an Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children in July that the new register would be a major step forward.

“For example, we will able to say whether any given child is on the database of all children who are in the national child protection system,” he said.

“While that is a small step, culturally it is very significant for us. That system will be available through Harcourt Street to all gardaí and all emergency medical services.”

A social worker who spoke to the Irish Examiner on condition of anonymity said having a national register accessible to relevant agencies was “extremely important from the point of view of protection of children”.

“If other professionals cannot access it, because it does not exist, there is no way of knowing if a child is known to the services. Currently, if a child moves from one HSE area to another medical staff or gardaí would not know they were at risk and could send them on their way, when maybe they shouldn’t.”

The absence of such a system has been the subject of repeated criticism by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) in its inspections of child protection and welfare services around the country.

In Cork North Lee, HIQA found that a hard copy of the names of children in the system was given to gardaí — risking an accidental leak.

In Co Kerry, an area manager wrote directly to gardaí every time a child was placed on the CPNS, but the senior gardaí who spoke to inspectors were unaware what children in their area were on it. HIQA warned that “this could mean that key information may not be available to other professionals therefore affecting their decisions regarding risks outside of office hours and this issue is a national issue”.

In Dublin North City, the system was not available on a 24-hour basis. HIQA said access to a 24-hour CPNS was a national issue that has been previously raised with Tusla and that addressing the problem would require a hi-tech system.

In its Review of Adequacy 2013, Tusla said preliminary work had been conducted to examine the IT options for hosting the new CPNS database and that a new project manager was due to be appointed in early 2014 to develop the IT component for the CPNS.

Tusla said the establishment of the CPNS across the health boards and later the HSE “has been uneven both in terms of a consistent approach to listing children and in the provision of access to the CPNS for relevant services and agencies”.