Over 43,000 referrals made to child protection and welfare services in 2014

A record number of children were referred to Tusla’s child protection and welfare services last year, even as the Child and Family Agency struggled with a €5.1m budget deficit.

The Tusla Annual Report for 2014 states that, based on provisional data, 43,179 referrals were made because of child welfare and child abuse issues — twice the number of referrals made less than a decade ago and an increase of 1,580 on 2013.

While the number of abuse referrals fell last year by almost 1,000 to 18,541, the number of child welfare referrals soared by 2,446 to 24,638.