Child protection rules - Time to care for our most vulnerable

There is a depressing sense of closing the stable door after the horse bolted about the new child protection standards drawn up by Hiqa, the health and social services watchdog.

The grim reality is that when thousands of children were in need of protection, no standards worthy of the name, moral or humane, seemed to exist in Irish society.

It is understandable that the focus of public concern has mainly been on sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests and the shocking violence and molestation in state–funded institutions run by religious orders of nuns and brothers where toddlers were subjected to neglect, ill-treatment and exploitation.

While the vast majority of clergy are virtuous and blameless, a blizzard of diocesan reports show that children continued to suffer abuse at the hands of ruthless clerics up the recent times. But the true extent of child abuse has much broader parameters and include other kinds of institutional and organisational abuse.

The latest report from Hiqa deals with how the children and family services of the HSE should promote the welfare of children in general. It applies particularly to those not getting the kind of care and protection they should be receiving from this frontline agency of the State in 21st century Ireland.

All too often, concerned families of troubled children have found it impossible to get relevant information about their children from the HSE. That appalling scenario is about to change radically as a result of the Hiqa direction that in future this information be made accessible to the families. This welcome development means the HSE can no longer cite ‘confidentiality’ as a ready excuse for not releasing records to worried parents.

It also emphasises the need for more timely access to childcare services and says greater urgency must be given to protecting children at risk of harm. It is all too easy to ignore the plight of children subjected to institutional or organisational abuse and Hiqa says this situation must also be addressed.

Compounding its many problems, the HSE child protection system has been notoriously under-resourced. A frightening level of inaction within the HSE over the plight of vulnerable children has also raised concerns. Because of vetting failures in the foster care service, children have been placed in the care of people with criminal records, alcohol and drug problems. Against this bleak backdrop, the hope is that Hiqa’s new standards will give children greater protection in future and ensure the kind of abuse which has been seen for so long in this country never happens again. Children must be put at the heart of the protection service.

Meanwhile, public opinion has been refocused on the vexed question of clerical abuse by the six-year jail sentence handed down to the first Catholic priest in the US to be found guilty of covering up claims of child sex abuse. Monsignor William Lynn, 61, former secretary of the clergy of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, was told by Judge M Teresa Sarmina that he had protected “monsters in clerical garb who molested children” by transferring them to other parishes.

Arguably, had the full weight of the law been brought against clerics accused of similarly covering up the activities of paedophile priests in this country by moving them from parish to parish, several members of the clergy would be behind bars.