884 entries for Government Department

The publication of Children First was quickly followed by a succession of tailored guidance documents produced by the Irish Sports Council, the Department of Education and Science and the Catholic Church, to name a few. Guidance for the voluntary and community sector was also produced and all of the former were designed to comply with the overarching principles and practices of Children First. Reported concerns about children increased exponentially from 243 in 1978 to 21,040 in 2006, with the highest number of reports in the ‘neglect’ category, followed by the child sexual abuse category. Reflecting the ever-widening pool of concerns about children, the HSE now reclassified concerns of a less serious nature as ‘welfare’ reports which, in 2006, accounted for over half of the reports made to the system. While the definition of ‘welfare’ is not specified in guidance, it is assumed that these reports were considered to constitute situations that warranted a non-investigative family support response. The HSE Review of Adequacy of Child and Family Services 2006 identified factors linked to ‘welfare’ including emotional/behavioural problems in children, substance abuse, involvement in crime, disability, mental illness, domestic violence and parental inability to cope.

Figure 2 shows this trend per 1,000 children under 18, highlighting that the increase in children in care was not driven by broader demographic trends alone. The rate per 1,000 children increased from two to over four children in care per 1,000 children under 18 from the late 1980s to 2006.86 Figure 3 provides a time series on the number of children in residential care in units under the operational and legislative ambit of the Department of Health and Children/Health Service Executive and the Department of Education and Science. It shows a very dramatic decline in numbers from approximately 2,200 children in 1970 to just over 400 in 2006.87 As noted above, while the overall number of children in care grew from the mid-1980s onwards, the type of care placement shifted decisively from residential care to foster care. By 1980, as shown in figure 4, there were slightly more children in foster care than residential care; in contrast, currently 84 percent of all children in care are in foster care (including relative care).88 Figure 3: Residential care in Ireland, 1970-2006

Figures 7 through 10 below represent available data on children in Industrial Schools and Residential Homes on 30th June of each year from 1970 to 1983. Responsibility for the majority of the homes listed above transferred to the Department of Health at the beginning of 1984, an issue that is dealt with at greater length later, thus the end date of 1983 for his data. Overall there has been a slight decrease in the number of children in such institutions, with girls representing a smaller proportion of their population each year as shown in figure 7 below. Figure 7: Children in care in Industrial Schools and Residential Homes by gender, stock figures 1970-83

The Daingean Reformatory School for Boys, ceased its function on 9th November 197394 and was replaced by Scoil Ard Mhuire, Lusk, County Dublin, which was certified as a Reformatory School on 30th January 1974.95 On 4th October 1983 the Provincial of the Oblate Order informed the Department of Education that it was the intention of the Order to withdraw from the management of the school within 12 months. The Department made inquiries to ascertain whether any other religious Order wished or were in a position to replace the Oblates and were informed by the Education Secretariat of the Diocese of Dublin that no other religious Order was available to replace the Oblates. Scoil Ard Mhuire ceased to operate as a certified Reformatory School with effect from 31st August 1985, thus ending the involvement of the Order with the running of Reformatory Schools in Ireland, which commenced, with the certification of the Glencree Reformatory in County Wicklow, on 12th April 1859.

Trinity House School first opened on 14th February 1983 as a secure unit to cater for young male offenders between the ages of 12 and 16 on admission. This was the first Reformatory School to be managed directly by the Department of Education. The first four boys were transferred from Loughan House, Blacklion, County Cavan on 24th March 1983, a reformatory school managed by the Department of Justice which was certified on 4th October, 1978, and were soon followed by another nine from the same facility the following month. With the opening of Trinity House, Loughan House closed as a Reformatory and re-opened as a semi-open prison for adults. On 23rd July 1984, St Ann’s Reformatory ceased to be certified at the request of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, who ran the home since it opened in May 1944,96 and Cuan Mhuire, Whitehall, Dublin (Reformatory School for girls) was opened.97 Cuan Mhuire in turn closed in the school year 1990/91 and was replaced by Oberstown Girls Centre, Lusk, County Dublin (Reformatory School and Remand and Assessment Unit for Females). In the school year 1991, a further new school was opened in Oberstown; this was Oberstown Boys Centre, Lusk, County Dublin (Reformatory School and Place of Detention for males).98 In the school year 1999-2000, St Laurence’s and St Michael’s were merged into the Finglas Children’s Centre and is now known as the Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre. Figure 11: Reformatories and Special Schools for young offenders, 1960-2005

According to the Department of Education Statistical Report for 1977-78, previous to 1978 all statistics relating to children entering Residential Homes and Special Schools (formerly Reformatory and Industrial Schools) were only supplied for children ‘committed’ by the courts. From 1978 onwards more detailed statistics are provided on the mechanism for admission including ‘voluntary’, ‘on remand’ and various ‘Health Acts(s)’. Voluntary only appears as a category for Special Schools for two years (1977-78 and 1978-79). To aid in the interpretation of figure 13 below, statistics for children committed ‘voluntarily’ have been included along with those for children being held ‘on remand’. These totals for 1970-74 are year-end totals (with the exception of 1974 which is for 30th September 1974); from 1975 onwards they are totals at 30th June of that year. What is most obvious from the figures below is the extensive decrease in the number of children committed to Reformatories and Special Schools through the courts and through the Health Acts. Figure 13: Children in care in Reformatories and Special Schools by legal basis, stock figures, 1970-2005

The following section is based upon the Department of Health reports from 1978 to 2005 on children in care. These reports vary from year to year in whether they record data on the number of children in care on a given day (stock), the number of children who were admitted to care during the year (flow), or a combination of these two types of data. Reports for the years 1978 to 1981 only recorded information on children either coming into care or those who were already in care; it is only from 1982 onwards that stock data is available, providing information on children in care on 31st December of the year. Data on children admitted to various types of care (foster, residential, etc.) are often not disaggregated by key variables such as gender or age in any consistent manner (or sometimes not at all). Further complicating matters is the fact that there are no available reports on children in care for the years 1986-88, 1993-95 or 1997. This is particularly regrettable given the fact that significant shifts in the provision of care for children occurred during these junctures. For example, the total number of children in state care began to rise in the early 1980s and again saw a sharp increase in the mid-1990s. A move away from the use of residential care and towards foster care also seemed to occur during these three-year interludes as well; however, the lack of any data during this time means that our ability to make inferences as to why such changes possibly took place is inherently limited.

Furthermore, even when a report is available the data it is not always comprehensive. For example in the 1978 Department of Health Report on children coming into care there is no information on 287 children of unmarried mothers awaiting adoption who were admitted to St Patrick’s Home during the year 1978 (p 3). Nor does the report include reasons for admission for 192 children who were under supervision ‘at nurse’ in the Eastern Health Board.

The following section attempts to overcome these limits in available data and roughly map the changes in provision of childcare in relation to factors such as type of care, gender, and reason for admission and type of care order. Where possible the most up-to-date categories used by the Department of Health are used in order to provide a sense of continuity over time. Where this has not been possible, older and now abandoned categories have been recoded in a logically consistent fashion in order to correspond with the newer categories. Unfortunately, such recoding was not always possible and many figures consist of a range of categories used from year to year making for cumbersome interpretations of the collated data; however, it is also emblematic of the inconsistency of the recording (or non-recording as often is the case) of such data on children in alternative forms of care.

Since 2002 the Department of Health has subdivided the reasons for children being taken into care into three categories: (1)abuse; (2)child-centred problems; (3)family-centred problems.

Classifications and counting methods vary considerably from year to year in the annual reports published by the Department of Health on children in care. Such frequent, and for the most part, unexplained changes complicate what ought to be the rather basic task of outlining and interpreting trends in the provision of alternative care for children over time. However, the different ways in which children are categorised and their families categorised also serves to illuminate the perceived ‘problem’ of non-nuclear family forms; in particular, unmarried mothers and their ‘illegitimate’ children. The timeline shown below in figure 21 is illustrative of the many changes in categorisation used in the Department of Health reports over the period 1978 to 2005. The excessive focus on unmarried mothers can be seen by mapping the descriptions of such women over time in relation to the reason their children were taken into care (shown in black) as well as the descriptions of the child’s ‘status’ or family background/type (shown in red). Figure 21: Changes in Department of Health Annual Reports Disclosure, 1978-2005

For example, according to the Department of Health Report, Children Coming Into Care 1978, the first such national survey of children in care of the health boards, the primary reason children were taken into care or placed under supervision107 for that year was that they were children of ‘unmarried mothers who were unable to care’ (p 4). This category represented around a third (33.8 percent) of all children taken into care by the State and is only followed by the ‘short-term illness of parent/guardian’ which represented 16.5 percent of all children taken into care in that year. Some other noteworthy reasons for children being taken into care that same year include: unsatisfactory home conditions (8.6 percent); parent/guardian in prison/custody (1.8 percent); travelling family (3.4 percent).

The 1979 report also includes an interesting survey of ‘underlying family problems’. Such additional descriptive information is rare in Department of Health Reports and provides an insight into the reasoning behind children being taken into care; once again it highlights the emphasis placed on the perceived ‘problem’ of single mothers. According to this survey, by far, the leading underlying family problem was perceived as ‘parental inadequacy’ (47 percent). Table 13 of the report cross tabulates the underlying family problems with the primary reason children were taken into care. Almost 20 percent of children taken into care were categorised as the children of ‘single mother(s), unable to care’ due to being ‘inadequate parent(s)’. Despite the fact that the report presents unusually detailed information on why children were taken into care, it is nonetheless limited by tautological thinking, as the second largest group in the table are described as children of ‘inadequate parent(s)’ whose underlying problem is ‘parental inadequacy’. Fifty seven children were reported to be living in a home with an ‘unsuitable moral atmosphere’; representing 1.7 percent of the children in care.

The 1979 report also provides more detail than many of the other Department of Health Reports on Children in Care in the last 30 years in its explanation for some of the reasons children were placed in residential care. By far the two primary reasons were that the child had two or more siblings already in care or that there were no suitable foster parents available. The number of children placed in residential care for ‘other’ reasons was also quite substantial. These other reasons were primarily that the child was either born in an institution or was born to a ‘single mother undecided about caring for child’. Interestingly, one case was recorded in which the mother was deemed to be ‘disturbed’ and another was recorded as having been a child ‘born during honeymoon’.

By 1984 these categories had once again changed and children were either recorded as ‘children of married parents’, ‘children of unmarried parents’ or ‘children of married women where husband is not father’. Children of ‘one parent families unable to cope’ still represented around a third of children in care. The 1985 report continues in the use of these categories and is the last report published until 1989. In the Department of Health report on children in the care of Health Boards for 1989 the specific focus on ‘unmarried mothers’ is not as evident as in previous years. Instead, the more inclusive language of ‘one parent unmarried’ is used; according to the report, this ‘means an unmarried mother or father who is not living with a partner’. Significantly, this is also the first year that the category of parents deemed ‘unable to cope’ (still the largest group at 31 percent) are not specifically identified as unmarried or single parents. The categories used are then consistent for the next three years until 1993 when, once again, a three-year gap in annual reporting occurs. When the next annual report was finally published again in 1996 the term ‘lone parent’ had come into use and ‘parental illness’ had been combined into the ‘parents unable to cope’ category of principal reasons for admission to care. Despite these changes, it remained that around a third (32.96 percent) of children were taken into care for this reason.