Chapter 4 — Residential child welfare in Ireland 1965-2008

Section 3: 1965-1976 – residential childcare in transition

In terms of the organisation of child welfare services, Clandillon argued that: the work for deprived children should be removed from the public health offices (County Medical officers and Public Health Nurses) where this arrangement exists in my area, e.g. Laois/ Offaly where, as I have pointed out earlier, hardly any children are boarded-out yet over 140 are in schools; Wicklow, where the C.M.C. was brought into the work very recently; Carlow / Kildare where, with the resignation of the Children’s Officer the work deteriorated rapidly in a little over a year; Waterford, Kilkenny, Clare.

Children’s officers should in her view be ‘professionally qualified social workers i.e. those with post-graduate qualifications, should be appointed to children’s officer posts, with a view to the eventual setting up of a social work department in each health authority area’. If this was to happen, such Departments, she argued: should cater for a much wider section of the community than children in need of social work help. They should include families at risk of breakdown for various reasons, one parent families and unmarried mothers, Child Guidance services, social care of the physically handicapped, mentally ill and mentally subnormal and social services for the aged. They should also cater for those who are incapable of providing for themselves or their dependents. A ‘homemaker’ service is of vital importance and also the supervision of day nurseries which should be obliged to register with the social service department. Housing welfare services should also be included as many of the problems of family breakdown are associated with inadequate living accommodation. Adoption work should be transferred to the new Department and should be carried out only by staff having post-graduate training. It follows that social workers at present employed in various fields of social work would belong to the social services department: Children’s Officers, medical and psychiatric social workers, probation officers, housing welfare officers.

What was required, Murray argued, was: making children maintained in institutions under section 55 of the Health Act subject to inspection and reports both at local and departmental level, and by requiring health authorities to keep personal files and case histories of these children in the same manner as for boarded-out children. The Department’s inspectors would then be in a position to make recommendations regarding the suitability or eligibility of the children for fosterage. At present the inspectors have instructions not to visit children in approved schools and institutions; and it was only recently, and after years of pressure by the inspectors, that the Department agreed to instruct health authorities to submit half-yearly returns of such children.

Clandillon made similar observations when noting that: Although children are admitted to approved institutions under the Health Act and the Department and health authorities contribute to their maintenance there is no provision under the Act for their inspection by officers of the health authorities or of the Department.152 A Department circular issued to health authorities 2nd July 1954 (no. 37/54) drew attention to the lack of provision for inspection153: Unfortunately this was not followed up and at a later date it was decided in the Department that as the schools were under the Department of Education and inspected by one of their officers there was no need for inspection by the Department of Health. Thus it came about that nobody visited the Health Act children to ascertain the reason for their admission in the first place, their level of mental and physical development and their suitability or otherwise for adoption or boarding-out, unless a mother had indicated that she wished her child to be reared in an institution. These children might be described during these years as the ‘forgotten ones’.

Clandillon also highlighted that returns of such children were not requested until 1965 and these returns ‘revealed that a number of children had been admitted to Industrial Schools and other institutions such as St Clare’s Stamullen, directly from a mother and baby home without notice being given to the Department. Most of these children were moved on to senior Industrial Schools. By then, little or no information was available as to their backgrounds.’ Clandillon went on to stress the need for a system of inspection in the homes in order to ascertain the reason for admission if not already clear, to follow up mothers to obtain their consent to the boarding-out or adoption of suitable children, to arrange for mental assessment in some cases and follow up for admission to Special Schools where recommended, and to check that physical defects are being treated, including those requiring surgery. The longer children live in institutions the less chance they have of integration into families and the dimmer become their hopes of adoption.

More generally, Murray signalled that a new system of child welfare was required and a broad-based commission of inquiry as suggested by O’Rourke were required and that all services for deprived children should be the responsibility of a single Department. The system of institutional care was particularly in need of reform as Murray commented: At present children coming before a juvenile court as a result of poverty, neglect, or minor delinquency may be committed either to an Industrial School or to the care of a ‘fit person’; but a ‘fit person’ within the meaning of the Children Act, 1908, does not include local authority. A local authority however may apply to the court to have a case dismissed and guarantee to take the child into care, but given the present climate of opinion at local level it is not surprising that apart from Dublin this solution is rarely availed of.

Murray noted the limitation of the Children Act 1908 in this regard was removed in Britain and Northern Ireland and urged a similar legislative change in Ireland; however, she also noted: this suggestion presupposes a properly organised and staffed social service department at local level capable of making the right decisions regarding the children confined to its care and with no motive other than their best interests. There appears to be no doubt that many of the children now condemned through no fault of their own in institutional life could be placed in a family circle if the law were amended and a serious effort made to provide the with foster parents.

Clandillon offered a similar analysis arguing: the greatest need is for a new and comprehensive Children Act which would include the children boarded-out or in schools under the Health Act, 1953, those covered by Parts I and II of the Children Acts, 1908-1957, and many more who are included under any of these. The new legislation would naturally indicate the need for one Government Department to be responsible for all the services for children in need of help, or a Children’s Department as a subsidiary of one Government Department as is the case in England and Wales. There has been adverse criticism for many years of the present arrangement whereby three Departments are concerned with different facets of the needs of deprived, delinquent or neglected children.

She also found favour with the proposal for a broad-based Commission of Inquiry into Children’s Services, but argued that ‘there is no point in looking into the causes of deprivation – family breakdown, delinquency, illegitimacy and so on. There is little use in trying to improve the lot of a child if the unfavourable circumstances which caused the trouble are allowed to continue. This would be merely putting a thin coat of paint on rotten wood.’154 Murray concluded her memo by stating: Without anticipating the report of the Committee on Industrial Schools it may be assumed that the day of the large Industrial School is over, and that in future, institutions in this category will take the form of much smaller units capable of giving individual attention to the children and of catering for special needs. The Department of Health has a special interest in the pattern which will emerge as children in the care of local authorities who need the discipline of an institution or who are unsuitable or ineligible for fosterage must be catered for in some type of school. The recommendations of the Committee therefore will be awaited not alone with interest but with some degree of apprehension.

The core ideas set out in the correspondence between Clandillon, Murray and O’Rourke were eventually encapsulated in a detailed circular issued in July 1970.155 This circular effectively established the template for childcare services for the next two decades, in particular the shift from residential care to foster care as the primary form of extra-familial care in Ireland and is quoted in full in Appendix 1 to this report to give a sense of the importance of the document.

The Incorporated Law Society of Ireland also contributed to the debate on the future of the Reformatory and Industrial School system in a memo to the Department of Education in April 1969. The memo recommended inter alia that separate institutions were required for children who committed an offence and those who were taken into care. It further advocated the appointment of a psychologist to each school and the development of group homes. The memo also highlighted the absence of any provision for non-Catholic children which they argued was: completely unconstitutional and utterly unjust. If there were only one such child it is an inescapable obligation of the State to make precisely the same provision for that child as they would for a child of any other faith. It is accepted that there may be very few children of the Protestant faith or of the Jewish faith but it is believed that the statistics available are not reliable in as much as no committals are made of such children because there is no place for them to go. If there were a place for them to go undoubtedly many more cases would come to light. In any case the number of cases is quite beside the point. Under the Constitution and in justice equal provision must be made for all and this is a matter of the utmost urgency.156

The memo also argued that while their recommendations would involve greater demands on the Department of Finance, that: Fortunately there is ample room for improvement here because at the present time the fees paid by the State to institutions for the accommodation of children of this kind are completely inadequate and is the prime factor leading to the complete breakdown in the system. Indeed were it not for the self-sacrifice and dedication of the people who run these schools the whole system would have broken down completely long ago.

Thus, in the immediate years preceding the publication of the deliberations of the Committee of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools Systems, a broad consensus had emerged on the difficulties with the existing system of child welfare, in particular the provision of substitute care. The need for new legislation was acknowledged by all and the dramatic decline in the numbers in residential care and the consequences of this for the capitation system of funding were widely realised.

On 5th January 1967, Mr John Hurley wrote to the Minister for Education, Mr Donagh O’Malley about the consequences of institutional life on a named young person. He also enclosed two documents, both written by Fr Kenneth McCabe, one on juvenile delinquency, which was based on McCabe’s studies of various institutions in the country, the second a descriptive account of St Patrick’s Training School in Belfast. The first report argued that: Our reformatory and industrial school system as it stands, is at best, only punitive. Reformatory and industrial schools are absolutely inadequately endowed. No institution could run on £3-10-0 per boy per week (This may not be an exact sum). The result is as one would expect. The food is bad. Boys are disgracefully dressed. In Daingean when I was there (Summer 1964) boys were not supplied with handkerchiefs. Spitting was a common habit. The boys got one shower per month (this at the height of summer). The school had only seven showers. Too much time, far too much, is spent in the school square; a large yard where the boys just hang around for hours at a time. There is no segregation of new boys from the rest. A relatively good boy is thrown in with the rest and, within a month, he is as bad as all the others.

He went on to claim that: The system in all our reformatory and industrial schools is repressive. Given the facilities at the disposal of the schools it seems unlikely that it could be otherwise. Boys are taken out of the natural (if defective) atmosphere of their homes and placed in an institution. If the institution is to succeed it must be as like a home as is possible. It will have the added job of supplying the defects of the home which were probably the root causes of the delinquency. Perhaps the most obvious problem to begin with here is that of sex. Boys from 12 on are reaching the most difficult period of their emotional growth. Too often, even in reasonably good circumstances, the adolescent will turn to sex for an escape from the hardships of everyday life. Nowadays, even though it is largely neglected in Ireland, psychologists and educators insist on the need for positive sex instruction. The majority, if not all of, the boys in reformatory and industrial schools simply have no positive sex instruction. They are placed in a repressive system, at a time of intense emotional and sexual growth, with no instruction, and are expected to develop naturally. There is no need to go into the detail of how sex can ‘go wrong’ at this stage and how habits can be acquired that will cause endless unhappiness in later life. What can we say of boys in abnormal and repressive environments? We can certainly say that only a miracle could avoid an intensification of the usual sexual problems. I want to stress this point for one very important reason. In any boarding schools one must expect a certain degree of ’homosexual’ activity. We must emphasize, however, that homosexual activity is not the same as homosexuality. Placed in unnatural circumstances (an all boys school) boys will inevitably engage in such activities. They must be checked but they are not serious. In an ’intenser’ atmosphere, such as an industrial school, this will be magnified. Boys will look for an outlet from repression and unhappiness in physical pleasure, either alone or with others. I have evidence that this is, in fact, the case in all industrial schools. I also have definite evidence of serious incidents of homosexual practices in some schools. A circumstance that doesn’t help matters here is the very unsuitable situation of most industrial schools. Daingean is situated in a place where almost all outside contact is impossible. Letterfrack and Upton are even worse. It seems completely wrong to send a Dublin boy to an environment so different from his home environment.