Child protection - Screening failure adds to child risks

AS he has done so very often, Fr Peter McVerry yesterday put our latest round of hand-wringing about child protection services into a damming perspective.

He reminded us that Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan have repeatedly assured us they will do all that is necessary to ensure Ireland’s discredited banks stay open.

That will cost anything up to €80 billion in direct State interventions and many millions more in lost business and employment opportunities because of the credit debacle choking enterprise around the country.

Fr McVerry pointed out, with the resignation of a man who knows his concerns are not really shared by those powerful enough to resolve them, that a tiny fraction of that bank-rescue money could provide us with a world-class child protection service.

Maybe even one where social workers don’t abandon abused 14-year-old girls, on their first night in care, in shopping centres when their shift is over.

The dreadful circumstances of Tracey Fay’s death, and the deaths of around 20 other young people in State care since 2002, fuelled last week’s outrage.

Another scandal highlighted by Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter yesterday will add to it. He pointed out that a HSE audit found that over one third of foster carers in the South had not undergone background checks.

These figures concur with earlier findings.

In 2008 the Health Information and Quality Authority found the majority of non-relative foster carers were assessed but over two-thirds of relative foster carers were not.

A comprehensive assessment is required under foster care regulations and standards. There are almost 5,000 children in care, so the figures involved are considerable.

Once again we put the rules in place but don’t bother to enforce them and children we imagine are protected may still be in jeopardy.

Peter McVerry and Alan Shatter were not the only voices raising concerns about the gap between the child protection services we demand and the reality yesterday. They were joined by Ian Elliott, chief executive of the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children, who said there were too many policies at local level and that changes were needed in a number of areas.

It is particularly disquieting to hear Mr Elliott say this as we have been reassured time and time again by the Catholic hierarchy that a new awareness and protocols are in place on these matters. Mr Elliott’s intervention should ring even more alarm bells and if protection polices are being stymied, even after the Ryan and Murphy reports, then those doing so must be named and removed from any position of authority.

We all know our child protection services are overstretched and under-resourced but there is more to these recurring scandals than that. We seem to think institutional failures on matters of child protection are unavoidable, thereby allowing them continue. Sadly, the evidence is irrefutable and continuous.

Maybe the understandable note of resignation in Fr McVerry’s voice reflects what we have all come to feel but, as we all must know, that is not good enough.