Chapter 4 — Residential child welfare in Ireland 1965-2008

Section 3: 1965-1976 – residential childcare in transition

In addition to the report by Lysaght, the Department of Education received a detailed memo from the Association of Resident Managers of Reformatory and Industrial Schools on 24th January 1967. In the memo the Managers highlighted the decline in the number of children and the closure of a number of schools in the previous year. In addition, they highlighted a number of further issues, including the unsatisfactory operation of the School Attendance Act, the lack of adequate funding for aftercare and the need for additional psychologists and psychiatrists. A further issue raised was the number of ‘pupils who are retarded and should not be in these schools’.139 The memo argued that such children place ‘a heavy burden on managers and staffs and then there is the added difficulty of finding suitable employment for those pupils at sixteen years of age. There should be a Special School for such pupils for they are a handicap to the other children and being unable to keep up with the class, their education tends to become worse.’

However, the core issue highlighted was the alleged inadequacy of the capitation grant and they concluded by stating: all the Industrial Schools are heavily in debt and that without immediate and substantial aid they will not be able to continue to do the work for which they were established. The question of closing the schools is under serious consideration by the managers because they are unhappy about the system. The Court approach is obsolete. The managers are painfully aware of the defects that exist due to the system. They would be more than willing to remove these defects but are not in a position to do so owing to the inadequate maintenance grant. The managers know the claim the schools have on just judgment and just action. They trust that their labours will procure for them the support they desire in the work for the more helpless of the Irish people. They calculate that a maintenance grant of £8 per week is needed now, so that outstanding debts may be liquidated and the schools brought up to-date in every way. We are chiefly concerned that further development should preserve which is valuable in existing practice and that any administrative change should above all be workable.

The Managers then outlined 16 specific recommendations. They were: 1.As the term ‘Industrial School’ no longer applies to some of our institutions, since we do not admit children who infringe socially, a more appropriate name should be applied to these schools. 2.Children from broken homes, or whose parents are ill, should not have to appear before the Children’s Court to be committed. If children are not committed it is impossible to obtain maintenance from County Councils. 3.As some of our children are backward when admitted classes in these schools should be small – 20 children per teacher so that individual attention could be given. 4.Supervisors and domestic staff should be paid by the health authority. Training courses for Supervisors are necessary. Personal salary for all lay members of the staff. 5.All public criticisms to be investigated and corrected by the Department. 6.Would suggest that Letterfrack should be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice and not under Education as at present. 7.When children are being transferred from an Industrial School to a Reformatory School at the age of 15 years or thereabouts, we think they should get an extension of time because it is impossible to do anything in 12 months or sometimes less. 8.That the rule regarding the length of time children may be away on holidays be relaxed and that the manager of each school be allowed to determine the number of days the children may remain out. 9.The discharge of committed children be given serious consideration, because there are many instances where children were discharged and the home conditions were very bad. 10.Children should be maintained until they reach at least 18 years of age or until they can do their Leaving Cert. examination if they so wish, or children learning trades be maintained until they have their time served. 11.Maintenance grant to be based on an average number of pupils. 12.Method of paying grants be radically changed. Would suggest that grants be paid every three months by Co. Councils and not every six months as at present. 13.Clarification of Health Act in regard to Industrial Schools. 14.Remission of rates on Industrial Schools. 15.Grants towards buildings and repairs should be made available. 16.That a statement on Government Policy towards Industrial Schools would be welcomed by Resident managers before next meeting at Easter.

By the early 1960s, the number of full-time officers in Dublin was five with a caseload of less than 250. As a consequence of the lack of work, one probation officer was seconded to the adoption board, a practice that continued over the years. In 1964 it was agreed to establish the post of Probation Administration Officer and to employ six full-time staff, two male and two female to be attached to the Children’s Court and one male and one female to the adult Custody Court at Chancery Street, with each officer having a caseload of 65 persons at any one time. Officers were expected to be ‘well-educated, have satisfactory experience in social work and otherwise possess the requisite knowledge and ability and be suitable to discharge the duties of the post of probation officer’ and a qualification in social science was desirable, but not essential. As late as 1968, no full-time probation officers were employed outside of Dublin. In January 1969 a review of the Probation and After-care Service was conducted by Mr Mac Conchradha140, who was also a member of the Committee of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools’ Systems, being an appointee of the Minister for Justice.141 Mr Mac Conchradha, in his report dated 14th July 1969, concluded: ‘For all practical purposes, probation operates only in the Juvenile Court in the Dublin Metropolitan District. Five officers – two men and three women are attached to this court at Dublin Castle. They had approximately 600 cases during 1968.’142 He noted that one of the reasons for the absence of the widespread use of probation was: Strange as it may appear, District Justices generally (and most likely the Judges also) do not seem to have adverted to the potentialities of probation. This was both my own impression and the opinion expressed of their colleagues by the few justices that are ‘probation minded’. It was often clear that invoking probation scarcely crossed their minds, although the virtual non-existence of a service was accountable to some extent for this. By and large, Justices were committed to the very conservative view, that probation, while not so specifically so limited in law, has in practice been considered valid for the very early offender amenable to supervision and ordinarily is indicated for juveniles only.143

Mr Mac Conchradha concluded that the ‘Juvenile Court in Dublin Castle requires attention urgently.’ Noting that approximately 300 juveniles were placed on probation each year, the relatively low number in part being explained by the ‘Justice’s feeling that the existing probation staff could not cope with any more’, but also by his view that ‘what is certain is that there has been no liberal or experimental use of probation. Consequently it cannot be excluded that there would not be greater recourse to probation if more officers were available.’144 Mr Mac Conchradha also provided background information of the emergence of pre-trial and pre-decision reports in relation to juveniles and the implementation of this practice prior to the publication of the Committee of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools’ Systems. He outlined: For some years past, there has been an international trend for courts to have a social enquiry made about offenders, before passing sentence. In Britain, this has been the practice with young persons and with all first committals to prisons. The practice commended itself to Justice Kennedy. I surmise that her views crystallised from the sessions of the Committee for Industrial and Reformatory Schools – of which she is the Chairman and I am the Minister’s nominee. The Committee discussed at length this matter of a court’s decision, in cases involving the prosecution of young people or their committal to care, being informed by their history and environment. The Committee’s favouring of this idea was supported by what they saw in Britain and throughout the Continent. Justice Kennedy introduced the procedure into the Juvenile Court in June 1968 and, in the case of every juvenile coming for the first time before the Court (1) on charge or (2) as liable to committal as being in need of care, remanded the case to enable the probation officers to carry out a pre-trial social enquiry. There was simply not the staff to undertake this additional work. For ten months, the existing five officers have virtually done nothing else but prepare pre-trial reports. Contacts with and supervision of their probationers became irregular, were mostly confined to urgent matters or to instances where there was an untoward development and were superficial apart from this. Recently, while Justice Kennedy was ill, some of her colleagues, while supplying in the Juvenile Court, adverted to the practice and advised her that it was objectionable to have these reports compiled in advance of the hearing and that they should properly be prepared only when the court had reached a conclusion on the issue before it but in advance of deciding the outcome. Justice Kennedy discontinued pre-trial reports in April 1969. She intended to introduce pre-decision reports there and then but, as the supervision of probationers had previously been so adversely affected in the existing staffing situation, she deferred the matter. The practice of having a pre-decision report prepared for the information of the court is fundamentally sound and is supported by what has transpired abroad. It is most likely that the Committee on Industrial and Reformatory Schools will recommend social inquiry, psychological assessment and medical psychiatric investigation, as a pre-requisite to the committal of young persons in need of care or for delinquency. This is now standard international practice and is something which Justice Kennedy will want to do, apart from all that, it would be a desirable advance and provision should be made for it.145

The report recommended that the service be expanded, a new central headquarters provided in Dublin and the recruitment of a substantial number of additional probation officers, prison welfare officers and clerical staff.

The long-standing Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers146 also published a series of recommendations on the future of child welfare in Ireland in 1970. Summarised in a letter to the editor in the Irish Times, the Committee argued for: The urgent need for a new Children’s Act. The urgent need for co-ordination of departments dealing with children at State level, and at county level through a children’s committee. The need for trained social workers as children’s officers, probation officers, school attendance officers, career guidance advisors and youth workers. A sincere effort is needed to keep the child in his own family and only when necessary a substitute family. Emergency care in an institution should be brief. We need to reduce the emotional disturbance caused by our present system. To prevent institutionalism fosterage should be encouraged by improving conditions, and allowing a more realistic maintenance (at present this varies from 12s 6d to £3 per week, whereas institutional care, which causes most emotional disturbance, costs £8 5s. per week per child). Scattered family group homes such as those established in Kilkenny, are better substitutes than institutions. Where institutional care is inevitable, regulations should govern qualifications and number of staff, and special efforts should be made to enable these children maintain contact with their families. A visiting committee should follow the progress of each child through school reports and school medical reports. Backwardness should be detected early and dealt with in special cases. All successful pupils should be given the opportunity of vocational or secondary education. At present the proportion is unreal. Above all, the Joint Committee deplores the present practice of transferring deprived children from institution to institution, even at the age for employment. • After-care for these children is seriously neglected. Social workers are essential for career guidance and for placing the children in the normal community, in hostels, or preferably, families.147

The Department of Health were also giving active consideration to the future of residential child welfare in Ireland, in particular their responsibilities under the Children Acts and sections 55 and 56 of the Health Act 1953.148 On 23rd September 1968, Mr O’Rourke in the Department of Health wrote a memo addressed to Miss Murray149 and Miss Clandillon, the Lady Inspectors of Boarded-out Children. The memo argued that the Department of Health: should, at this stage, review the services, dealt with in this division, which are provided for children who come within the scope of the Children Acts and the relevant provisions of the 1953 Act. What I have in mind is that we should consider the adequacy and inadequacies of the services provided for boarded-out children, those placed in approved schools and those who are at nurse; that we should aim at suggesting improvements which might be made in the existing services or innovations which are required to meet needs that at present are unfulfilled; consider the type of service which will be developing during the next decade or so and which will have to be organised within the framework of the regional service envisaged in the White Paper; consider, in particular, in the context of those regional arrangements, the type of case work which will need to be done at local level and the appropriate nature of the regional and departmental supervision which such services will need and, finally, study the services for which we, in this Department, have responsibility in the context of the total services required by the deprived child in general.

His memo went on to note that having reviewed the available statistical data on children in care, there was a: constant and continuing decline in the number of children boarded-out; the consistent growth in those being adopted and a continuing fall in the number of children at nurse. The disquieting feature which it also shows is the increase in the number of children maintained by health authorities in approved schools despite the fact that policy, to date, has been to encourage boarding out or adoption to the greatest possible extent.

In particular he wished the inspectors to critically examine the service as it exists at present and comment, not alone on its advantages, but on the deficiencies existing in it.

Mr O’Rourke observed that it appeared increasingly difficult to recruit foster parents and this needed to be addressed and that the supervision of children, both ‘at nurse’ and ‘boarded-out’ required attention. In relation to children maintained by health authorities in Industrial Schools, he noted that such children were not subject to any inspection by the Department of Health and consideration of how best to address this issue was required. Finally, Mr O’Rourke noted that the existing range of services was fragmented, and as a consequence ‘three departments all have partial responsibility for the provision of limited services for children who, for reasons varying from poverty to delinquency, come under central government control’ and this state of affairs ‘is not a satisfactory one’. While acknowledging that the Commission of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools, a Commission, which in his view, ‘shows an uninhibited tendency to exceed its restricted terms of reference’ might deal with this issue in their report, Mr O’Rourke argued: what may be needed most of all is a broadly based commission with very wide terms of reference which would enable it to inquire into the services available for all classes of deprived children and to make recommendations about the manner in which they would be provided in the future.

Both Miss Murray and Miss Clandillon provided detailed written responses to the memo and these provide a snapshot of thinking in the Department of Health on the cusp of substantial changes in child welfare in Ireland. Responding to the query as to why the numbers of boarded–out children had declined over the previous decade, Miss Murray attributed it to introduction of legal adoption, the continuing emigration of unmarried mothers, and most importantly, the: lack of interest in, or, in some cases, the positive antagonism to the scheme on the part of many health authorities and/or their officials. In Counties Louth and Sligo for example the boarding out scheme is almost non-existent while in some other areas it is barely tolerated. Boarding-out is the Cinderella of the local authority services and there is little informed opinion on the subject at a local level. The emphasis now is on legal adoption which was welcomed by the local authorities for the wrong reasons, viz. as a means of avoiding financial and supervisory responsibility for illegitimate children, and health authority officials have been known to put pressure on unmarried mothers to allow their children to be placed for adoption, even to the extent of refusing any alternative help.150

Murray argues that the advantages of boarded-out over other means of dealing with deprived children were well known and that the: deficiencies in the boarding-out scheme as it operates in Ireland may be traced to a general lack of interest which manifests itself in the absence of a uniform system of supervision, the appointment of unsuitable officers, and as mentioned above, an unsympathetic attitude on the part of many health authorities. Failures involving the removal of the children are surprisingly rare in view of the haphazard administration, and in my area occur chiefly in Counties Dublin and Sligo...Boarding breaks down occasionally in Dublin due to (a) the background and heredity of some of the children which renders them more difficult to control than rural children, (b) careless and haphazard selection of foster homes and foster parents, and (c) the absence of preventative and remedial measures at a sufficiently early stage. Failures in Sligo are due, inter alia, to (a) the late age at which children are placed in foster homes (usually from Nazareth House, Sligo,) which militates against their settling down in normal surroundings, and (b) the complete lack of expertise in the selection of foster homes and foster parents.

However, despite outlining these deficiencies and recognising that health authorities did not collect statistics on the after-care of boarded-out children, Murray nonetheless noted: While the occasional failure in boarding-out is well publicised – usually by interested parties – the outstanding success of the scheme as a whole is rarely alluded to. Former boarded-out children are represented in all walks of life. They are to be found in farming and business, as members of Religious Orders of Brothers, among nuns, teachers, civil servants, and nurses, in the army and naval service, in the hotel trade and in all skilled occupations. At the moment a number of boarded-out children are attending Irish Universities, and at least four are studying for the priesthood. Foster parents have reason to be proud of the work they have accomplished down the years, frequently without significant assistance from the local authority.

Miss Clandillon was equally positive abut the after-care employment of boarded-out children in her area, highlighting that ‘among the girls at least ten became nuns, one of whom is now on the missions in Zambia and three are teaching in England.’ Like Miss Murray, Clandillon was positive about the use of boarding-out and suggested that breakdowns in placement were comparatively rare. She observed: the vast majority are illegitimate children who are born in mother-and-baby Homes and who are boarded-out at an early age with a view to being reared as members of the fostering family and of residing permanently with the foster parents. Removals are comparatively rare, the chief reasons being the death of a foster mother in the case of a young child.