Childcare services - A tiny price to change so many lives

IT may seem unreasonable to call for an increase in Government spending during the worst economic crisis of modern times. It may seem doubly so just a day after Taoiseach Brian Cowen — and the rest of us — had to countenance the truly frightening prospect of 400,000 workers losing their jobs before the end of the year.

It might not matter that spending this money is the right thing to do. It might not even matter that this expenditure could change the lives of a small group of people who, at an impossibly early stage in life, were dealt a very poor hand of cards. However, it might just matter that this expenditure would save the exchequer considerable sums and, as an aside, keep a good number of people out of jail and help them contribute to society rather than depend on it.

Yesterday, Focus Ireland launched a campaign to do just that. Their cause deserves, most especially in these awful times, our full support. They want the Childcare Act, in relation to children who are in state care and have reached the age of 18, changed.

As the law stands the Health Services Executive “may” provide aftercare services to adolescents leaving state care — institutional or fostered — after they have reached the age of 18, or it may not. The campaign is aimed at changing the “may” to “must” and making a programme of care mandatory until the person involved reaches 21. The arguments are powerful.

Focus Ireland tell us that within two years of leaving state care two thirds of these young adults are homeless. They tell us that at any given time a third of the prisoners on remand at Cloverhill Prison passed through childcare services. They tell us many of them are on the spiral of criminality and addiction that ends in ruined and wasted lives.

How else could it be? How many of us would survive in today’s world if at the age of 18 we were, without family support and just a limited education, expected to house and feed ourselves?

There is already an example for the state to follow. So many of the ordinary people doing extraordinary work in our society — foster parents — are, whether supported by the HSE or not, supporting these young people as they finish their education.

Focus Ireland has, with great success, shown another way by providing transitory accommodation for a small number of people in Dublin.

Speaking in the Dáil yesterday Labour leader Eamon Gilmore pointed out that each job lost cost the state €20,000 a year in social welfare payments and lost tax, and that the jobs lost last month alone would cost an extra €730m.

The cost of maintaining a person in prison is a multiple of that, so it makes absolute economic and moral sense to intervene while there is still a prospect of helping someone avoid this trap.

The HSE may not have the funds needed to support this change, maybe because they pay so many consultants far, far more than other European health services do, or it may be that they are under-funded. However, with the prospect of having such a positive impact all factors have to be confronted. It is unimaginable that the Department of Justice would not support this proposal as they see the consequences of its absence every day. It would in time save them considerable resources too. Even in these chastened, worrying times this moderate expenditure is justified.