Social Services report - Standard of care centres must rise

THE Social Services Inspectorate’s (SSI) fourth annual report into conditions at children’s residential centres during 2004, which is published today, concludes that the services have improved but that quality differs significantly across the country.

The number of children in care at the beginning of the year amounted to a 4% increase on 2001.

Of those children, 80% live in foster care.

Just over 60% of the residential centres were run by health boards, while little over a quarter were run by voluntary organisations and the remainder were privately owned.

The overwhelming majority of these centres - 89% - housed four to five children. They were located in the community and run by staff teams.

But the Inspectorate was concerned that 20 children were living in one place, which was deemed as not being in the interest of the children.

This heavy concentration of children was obviously unnecessary as the average occupancy rate nationally was just 76%, which meant that almost one in four places were vacant.

The Inspectorate concluded that the majority of centres provided a good standard of daily care in relation to education, health, recreation and contact with families, but five centres were criticised for impersonal, institutionalised practices such as using only children’s surnames on written records.

The Inspectorate again identified four areas in need of urgent improvement in the interest of staff continuity and quality care.

Only six of 17 centres had a permanent manager and only 44% of the staff members were in permanent positions.

Over the years the Inspectorate has consistently identified the need to provide written care plans for the children, but in more than half of the cases, such plans have not been up to standard.

It is not acceptable that after five years, quality planning is still not in place for all of the children.

In seven of the 17 centres there were significant difficulties with the management of children’s behaviour. Higher incidents of physical restraint were frequently attributed to poor management and staff turnover.

The report also identified a lack of proper assistance to the young people leaving care.

It called on the Health Service Executive to implement guidelines of the Department of Health & Children and it has called on Minister Brian Lenihan to amend the Child Care Act (1991) to make the provision of after-care service mandatory.

While proper standards of child protection were met in most of the centres, the Inspectorate found that children in some places were at risk from peers or from others because they went missing from those centres.

While the SSI inspected centres run by the health boards, the Registration and Inspection units of the health boards were supposed to inspect voluntary and private centres every three years, but one of the boards did not inspect five centres during the three-year time frame.

In addition, accommodation of the more-than 200 separated children seeking asylum had neither been registered nor inspected. This is intolerable.

The horrors of inadequate childcare in the residential institutions of the past have become particularly apparent in recent years as a result of social problems and costly litigation. The current deficiencies should therefore be tackled as a matter of priority.