32 entries for Babies and Toddlers

Mr Granville carried out a General Inspection on 25th May 1980; the previous inspection was dated 27th January 1977. He inspected all the group homes and, in general, his comments were favourable. In January 1981, Mr Granville, in an addendum to his General Inspection report, noted that Summerhill had been redecorated and refurbished to an excellent standard. The five other group homes, however, still needed attention, and only two were in satisfactory condition. He noted that there were too few staff and some were untrained in the nursery, where babies were in residence for far too long. He was very concerned about the emotional damage being inadvertently caused by being handled by so many different staff, and discussed this with the Resident Manager. There were 41 staff in total in the School, two male and 39 female. There had been 32 changes of staff since 1977. His concluded his report with the following: Conclusions: 1. The overall total number of children in residential care has not decreased over the past few years, which is a disappointing factor. Page 211 records 113 children in residence, two more than at the latest inspection. There is a marked increase in the numbers in the nursery and in the short term unit St Teresa’s ... In my opinion there are far too many children in residential care in a city the size of Kilkenny.

General conclusions 1. The Sisters of Charity were progressive in their approach and unique among Congregations in sending their members to the UK to undergo courses in childcare and, as a result, they split up the Institution into separate units, which worked much better than the large unitary institutions. 2. Notwithstanding the favourable evidence about this Institution, children were severely physically punished and treated unsympathetically by some of the care staff, which continued into later years. Even when complaints were made, no action was taken by management to protect the children. 3. Differential treatment between the units is a major criticism of the Institution. The quality of care depended on which unit the child was placed in. The blue unit was run by Sr Astrid, the Resident Manager, and the girls in it received the most favourable treatment, according to the evidence. This Sister was very kind and there was little or no corporal punishment, and the girls in her group considered themselves, and were considered, to be the lucky ones. 4. No lessons were learned from the Jacobs case at the time, and no proper system of record keeping or monitoring was introduced. In its Submissions, the Congregation did not address the serious implications of this case. The apology referred only to the two convicted abusers and, even then, no Congregational responsibility was acknowledged. 5. Sr Astrid eventually removed Mr Pleece and, later, Mr Tade after complaints were made to her about them. However, she did not face up to what had happened to the children. She failed in her duty to provide accurate information to other bodies and thereby exposed other children to the risk of abuse.