Chapter 3 — Gateways

Non-attendance at school

As mentioned, there were three paths to the schools, of which the first was committal via the District Court, and was by far the most frequently used and has already been covered. At the time of the Kennedy Report, there were 97 (or 4%) of the industrial school population in the voluntary category, with 80% and 16% in the court and health authority categories respectively. However, in an earlier period, when those committed by the court would have been more numerous, children maintained voluntarily were even less significant. For the period 1949 to 1969, the average ‘voluntary’ population figure was 101 or 2.2% of the entire schools’ population.

The remaining major category was children placed in certified industrial schools by the health authorities. As with children placed voluntarily and directly in the schools, by parents or guardians, such children entered without the involvement of a court and could be withdrawn without legal formality;26 if and when family circumstances permitted.

Until it was repealed in 1991, the statutory authority of a health authority or board to place a child in an industrial school was section 55 of the Health Act, 1953 (or its precursors). By this provision, a health authority was empowered to provide for the assistance of a child by boarding the child out, by sending him to an industrial school approved by the Minister for Health or, where the child was not less than 14 years of age, by arranging for his employment.27

These powers applied only to two rather narrow categories of child. In addition to a means test, the child had to be either an orphan or had to have been deserted by his parents or parent; and, in the case of an illegitimate child, whose mother was dead or was deserted by the mother, or the parent/guardian had to consent.28

The Cussen Report in 1936 took the view that local authorities/health authorities: as a whole [they] would appear not to have sufficiently appreciated their responsibilities under law in regard either to the schools or the children, and the evidence which we have adduced indicates that they still display little interest in the work of the schools beyond the payment of a weekly capitation grant ...

In the early 1950s, the number of children sent to the schools by boards of health increased for such reasons as the need to find somewhere to house children who would earlier have lived in county homes. Whatever the causes, a pattern developed in the late 1940s by which health authorities sought to put children in industrial schools, despite the preference of the Department of Health for boarding out (this tension between the two authorities is discussed in Eoin O’Sullivan’s chapter).

Accordingly, the health authorities encouraged existing industrial schools to apply to the Department of Health for the necessary certification to enable them to receive health authority referrals.

Equally, because of the falling numbers of residents being committed by the courts, schools were actively looking for children, and made the health authorities aware of this.

Little seems to have changed during the quarter of a century up to 1970, when the health boards were established, and they increasingly employed social workers to work with children in care and their families. The social workers saw it as their duty to try to avoid breaking up the family, unless there was no alternative. Where there was no alternative, then fostering was the preferred option.