Out-of-hours service - Vulnerable children deserve care

At its annual conference this week the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors highlighted the need for an out-of-hours service for the care and welfare of children in need.

Parenting has always been more than an eight-hour day and five-day week responsibility. The problems of vulnerable children in need of help cannot be pigeonholed into the hours of a normal working week.

There is no out-of-hours social service available for children in need of care outside Dublin.

But even in Dublin, there are shortcomings, and An Gárda Síochána and hospitals are frequently needed to access the service.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is in negotiations with the trade union, Impact, to roll-out a 24-hour service nationwide. It would be nice if the HSE, which exhibits an unlimited capacity to spend money, would have the initiative to get such things done before others feel compelled to highlight its deficiencies.

Many young people in need of help are afraid to approach An Gárda Síochána for that necessary assistance, and often the gardaí and hospitals are being placed in an invidious position when it comes to helping vulnerable children.

Once the HSE switchboards go off around the country at 5pm, it is virtually impossible to contact the necessary social workers. In practice the social workers do not stop working at 5pm but the gardaí and hospital staff are unable to contact them out-of-hours, and even when they do locate an individual social worker, the latter may not have the necessary access to foster carers or residential services out-of-hours.

All too often vulnerable children have to spend overnight in a Garda station or in already overcrowded hospitals, where they take up the vital space of ill people in need of care.

A recent study by the Social Services Inspectorate of the 4,500 children in foster care found disparities between the services in different areas. One in three children in foster care do not have a dedicated social worker, as best practices require. As a result some 650 children are at risk.

A spokesman for the Irish Association of Social Workers contends that the protection of children is at the bottom of the list of priorities of those responsible for health funding.

This amounts to brainless management, because ultimately those vulnerable children could end up costing society much more than if proper care were provided when needed.