HSE fails regularly to fulfil child welfare mandate

I AGREE with the recent statement of Fr Peter McVerry that the Government should apply the same vigour in protecting our children as protecting the banks.

As a solicitor who practises in this area I am aware the HSE is not the sole contributor to this problem, nor can it be its saviour.

However, the recent difficulties highlight an ongoing crisis in this area due to lack of proper funding and planning. The HSE regularly fails to fulfil its statutory mandate, particularly with regard to putting the child’s welfare as the first and paramount consideration

The HSE’s childcare obligations can be divided into two sections: pre- and post-care. Both require greater and more realistic investment.

Pre-care needs to support struggling families to avoid care with educational, occupational, speech and family therapy, psychological and psychiatric support, addiction counselling, housing support, home help and respite care.

Post-care requires even greater investment to meet the needs of the children and their parents so that a plan can be implemented for the children to be returned if possible and, if not, to ensure parents have as active a role in their children’s lives while in care.

There is a regrettable tendency that once a child is placed in care the work with the parents ends and they are perceived as an inconvenience and an irrelevance.

Consultation with parents on issues often ends and access by the children to their parents has to be demanded rather than provided. Minimising the parents’ role while in care results in children having no support and/or an unresolved relationship when they are discharged, often leading to tragedy or a repeat of their parents’ mistakes.

Children are either placed in foster or residential care, and there are problems with both. There are not enough suitable foster families resulting in children being split from their siblings and moved from their school and area.

Foster homes may not be what the ordinary person would perceive them to be as some only have children who are in care from different unconnected families. There remains a lack of of therapeutic foster carers for children with special needs.

Residential care and stepdown facilities need serious investment and overhaul. There are not enough social and support workers (the promised additional 200 social workers is inadequate and will, as far as I understand, be subsumed by the ongoing embargo on employment). This can lead to cases being missed and allows serious inconsistencies of approach to occur.

There is no active culture of peer review or stress-testing of professional opinions to avoid prejudice, conflict, ignorance or incompetence.

There is a lot of good work done by social workers, foster parents, etc, but it is inadequate and inconsistent. Some of these inadequacies can be temporarily resolved through legal representation and a concerned court, but such an approach is too dependent on luck and timing and leaves many children falling through the cracks.

An honest and forensic look at the system is needed, but it would be undesirable for such a review to be undertaken by the HSE.

Colm Roberts

Solicitor

The Law Centre

Popes Quay

Cork