NOWHERE ELSE TO GO

NOEL HOWARD tells a story about a teenager, both troubled and troublesome, and his stay in a unit some years ago in the care system.

Mr Howard, public relations officer of the Irish Association of Social Care Workers, says: “He was the most difficult boy to work with in the centre, the one who had run away more than any other boy in the centre, a nightmare to work with. By anybody’s reckoning, here was a child who obviously wasn’t happy.

“The day that child left that centre, he told a member of staff, with tears streaming down his face, that the time he had been there was the happiest time in his life.”

Mr Howard tells the story to highlight what he believes is a crucial aspect of life within parts of the care system — that things are not always as black and white as they seem.

This week an inspection report by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) laid out in stark terms the failures at Rath na nÓg, a high-support unit in Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, failures so marked that the HSE has decided to close down the facility.

Frances Fitzgerald, the children’s minister, has requested a report into how the failures occurred, while EPIC, a body which offers support to people in care, welcomed the move to close down what appeared a dysfunctional facility where, in Hiqa’s words, the safety of children resident there was not guaranteed.

Only the Irish Association of Social Care Workers, in a strongly worded statement, demurred from this view. As far as it viewed the situation, closing down a unit which opened as recently as 2002 was not cause for satisfaction. Mr Howard yesterday said that “quite clearly, drastic action had to be taken”. But he added closure was not necessarily the route he and his members would have chosen.

Rath na nÓg is currently home to just two children, and will close next month. Hiqa found a number of causes for serious concern, not least issues of bullying among the four children and young people staying there at the time of the inspection, as well as concerns over the ability of staff to control the situation, unauthorised absences by residents, and a fire risk based on the fact that as many as six fires may have been started there over a half-year period, at a time when the external doors were closed at 9pm each night to ensure a limit on the number of absconsions.

Looking after vulnerable, volatile children, some of whom have experienced multiple placements, family breakdown, drink and drug abuse, and the rest, is always likely to be a challenging experience. The fall-out from the Hiqa report outlines just how difficult it sometimes is to see the wood for the trees.

It says staff told Hiqa inspectors that the order to close the doors at night had come from the top of the HSE’s child and family services and national director Gordon Jeyes, although there was no written directive.

Mr Howard said yesterday that some staff at Rath na nÓg, while aware of the need to allow the children as much liberty as possible, backed the idea of closing the doors at night in cases where they knew that a young person going absent without authority could have put them in a dangerous situation.

The trade union Impact issued a statement yesterday, saying staff at Rath na nÓg had “repeatedly raised concerns over the legal, health and safety, and children’s rights aspects of a management instruction to lock external doors overnight”. Impact said staff even raised the issue with a Hiqa inspector last December — before the policy was even introduced — but were referred back to local management. To top things off, the HSE said that, far from being an outlier in the context of Rath na nÓg, the policy of locking external doors had been “replicated” in other facilities.

Undoubtedly, staff in a facility such as Rath na nÓg face few easy choices. If you knew a child was going to nip out and maybe end up in danger, self-inflicted or otherwise, what would you do? Does their right to liberty override the ‘in loco parentis’ role of those in charge of their care?

According to Mr Howard, today’s “highly regularised system” means that “the humanity, care, and compassion that should be part and parcel of dealing with difficult children is being squeezed out of people”.

He adds: “They are afraid to act in instinctive way, for fear of allegations.”

The Irish Association of Social Care Workers has asked that Hiqa, in addition to highlighting the problems uncovered in inspections, elaborate on how those problems could be addressed. Hiqa might very well counter that that is not its job, but Mr Howard believes that often inspections are a snapshot of a certain time and place, and that few situations are “black and white”.

Regarding the policy of locking the doors, Mr Howard says: “That is not the level of care they should be getting but obviously, in situations that arise where staff are faced with a moral or ethical dilemma — I know where they are going, [the children] might be clear about where they are going, being at risk, or exploited — what are people to do?

“Sometimes in residential centres, things can go in phases. You can have a period where children are running away, then you have a situation where you have a settled period.”

Staff can get frustrated, says Mr Howard, overwhelmed by the way in which matters spiral out of control but unsure as to how to rein in the situation. It might require a very sophisticated way of working through the kinks, but even then, “some children will put you to the pin of your collar”, he says, where “they will confuse kindness with weakness”.

“That is not their fault, that’s the result of marginalisation,” he says. “They can make life hell for the staff and management and themselves. They may have had multiple placements, they have dropped through every net.”

What will become of Rath na nÓg is uncertain and, with changes in the planned at Crannog Nua, another high-support unit, it will mean that, in the near future, only voluntary high-support units will remain.

“I don’t think the concept of high support was ever clearly understood — it meant one thing to one person and another to another,” Mr Howard says, although that is not to diminish the element of hurt felt over the impending closure of Rath na nÓg.

“There was huge money went into it. There was really a sense of optim-ism, that this was a great addition with a school on site, recreational facilities.

“It’s unbelievable and it’s saddening and maddening, to be honest.”