Gardaí called to manage risk at troubled children residential centre

A report into a residential centre for troubled children has found that gardaí were sometimes called “as a method of managing risk”, writes Noel Baker.

The inspection by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) into the unnamed centre in the south of the country found that, in some incidents, staff had been assaulted and children had been arrested. Data returned to Hiqa showed that gardaí were called to the campus 10 times since the last inspection “to support the management of behaviour”.

It also found that staff on the campus were not able to ensure safe use of mobile phones for all young people. In some cases, phones were monitored and removed when unsuitable content was accessed, but in other cases staff were unable to monitor phones even though there were fears as to what content was being viewed.

The report found the centre was non-compliant in eight of the 10 standards assessed and was majorly non-compliant on management and staffing. It did acknowledge some significant improvements since previous reports, but during the inspection, Tusla monitoring officers told inspectors that in their view, the centre was not fit for purpose.

The residential service provided care for up to 15 boys aged 12 to 16 years on admission. At the time of the inspection, six children were staying in the campus while another child was at home. A strategic review of its operations was ongoing and Tusla had stopped admitting children to the campus in September 2016.

There had been 576 significant event notifications for seven children who were identified as engaging in risk behaviour in the period since the previous inspection. It found that three of the seven children living in the campus were not suitably placed. Since the last inspection, there had been 118 episodes of ‘missing from care’, 25 incidents of children ‘absent’, and seven incidents of children ‘absent at risk’.

According to the report, communication between the management team and staff continued to require improvement, systems to manage the finances were not always effective, information governance arrangements were not robust — including some data protection breaches, and risk management systems were not effective. Hiqa issued an action plan and Tusla said that greater efforts would be made, noting that “regrettably there are a number of areas that haven’t progressed as quickly as scheduled”.

Tusla said a service development oversight group has been established by the Chief Operations Officer and will continue to meet monthly for an initial six-month period.

This story first appeared in the Irish Examiner.