Child welfare - Broken vows no surprise

Nobody should be surprised that the Government has been breaking its promises.

The Children’s Rights Alliance Report Card for 2009 provides a yardstick for measuring the broken promises in child welfare.

Out of 25 key commitments made in the documents Towards 2016 and the Programme for Government, more than half are seriously behind schedule. In the area of children’s health, 300 primary care teams were supposed to have been set up by the end of last year, but only 97 were established.

A Vision for Change recommended 71 mental health teams, but only 47 were set up, and some of those do not have their full complement of staff. The HSE promised 30 inpatient beds, but it only came up with 16, which is well short of the 100 beds advocated in A Vision for Change.

As a result, teenagers often have to be treated in adult psychiatric or medical wards. Efforts to reach mental health targets have been dismal.

If they lacked the vision, competence and commitment to perform properly in the best of times, it is difficult to have any confidence in the ability of the Government or its agencies now.

This is a further indictment.