HSE internal report - Findings an indictment of service

THE horrific rape and barbaric torture of four daughters by their father, who was jailed for life last week, has refocused the spotlight of public opinion on Ireland’s appalling crisis of child abuse and the role of the health service in this atrocity.

To inform debate, the Irish Examiner today publishes the findings of an internal HSE report which throws new light on its performance in the area of childcare. It is a revealing insight into this dark corner of Irish life.

Significantly, the document coincides with the launch of an internal HSE probe to discover why information was not passed by one health board in the east of the country to its counterpart in the west, of what was known about the risks posed to children by this father. The investigation must establish why, despite coming to the notice of the health service in 2000, nine years passed before the perpetrator was finally arrested.

Rather than targeting specific cases, the internal report is a broad statistical analysis of how quickly vulnerable children in need of care are looked after. By every yardstick, the findings give cause for concern.

It highlights serious policy deficiencies and exposes unacceptable delays, plus other unsatisfactory aspects of its child care operation. It charts the use of unapproved foster carers and the failure to assess children referred to the services within recommended deadlines.

Seen against a backdrop of thousands of referrals of child abuse cases, including neglect, made to the social services during the first nine months of the year, the shortcomings amount to an indictment of the children and family services of the HSE. Lending weight to the referrals, they usually come from local GPs, teachers and other professionals concerned with a child’s safety or welfare.

The figures tell a worrying story of not meeting the 24-hour target set for assessing children. They show, for example, that out of 4,085 referrals of child abuse, including neglect, preliminary inquiries were outside the target time-frame in roughly one in every three cases (in the area covered by HSE South nearly half the 606 preliminary inquires took place outside the 24-hour deadline).

It is important that the initial assessment target be met because it informs the decision to bring in the child protection services which operate at the cliff-face of tackling abuse. Since the responsibilities of the HSE in relation to children in its care are clearly set down in law, prolonged delays are unacceptable. To allow the suffering of a child to continue even for an hour is too high a price to pay for the negative impact of the Government’s ban on recruitment in the HSE.

Meanwhile, the inquiry into the communications breach in the multiple rape case must uncover the reason behind the inexplicable failure to prevent the appalling chronicle of abuse to continue. In the public interest the findings must be published.

All too often, responsibility is attributed to anonymous “systemic failure”, a convenient device which has turned many an inquiry into a whitewash. Given the gravity of this case, the blame should be placed squarely at the door of those whose inactivity allowed the shocking chronicle of torture to continue unhindered.