884 entries for Government Department

On 20th April and 11th May 1977 a series of meetings took place between the relevant Departments and the CMRS on the issue of financing the home and on 18th May 1977, a meeting took place between the CMRS and the Local Government and Public Services Union with representatives of the Departments of Health and Education in attendance. Following these meetings it was agreed that the capitation rate would be increased to £30 per child per week and that scales of pay and other conditions for child care staff would be recommended by the Union to their members. The Department of Health noted: Notwithstanding the recommendation for a budget system, the Department of Education (which has administrative responsibility for the majority of the residential homes) still strongly favours the straight capitation system on the grounds that it gives the homes greater freedom to manage their own affairs and to decide their own priorities. They accept, however, the necessity to have the capitation rate adjusted regularly to allow for the effects of inflation and to provide reasonable remuneration for the staff, having regard to the nature of their work.

In addition the Task Force recommended that ‘small community centres for about 4 or 6 children would be required’ to cater for children with delinquent tendencies and for other children with serious personal problems who require intensive, personalised care. This was accepted by the Department of Health who stated they were: examining, in consultation with the health boards, the feasibility of existing residential facilities adapting their structures and revising roles and objectives to facilitate development along these lines. The Minister’s aim is to have under his aegis a comprehensive and inter-locking locally based child care system serving the needs of identified communities. Residential homes would be only one of the elements within this system with a very specifically defined, though complementary, role to play. Homes will fall into one of the categories..., each category being given clear objectives for the service they are providing. Homes will, it appears, tend to be small units, providing a defined service for a clearly identified client group. Indeed, the process of changing to the smaller family style residential unit is now well advanced although there remains a small number of homes still operating along old institutional lines. Plans are almost complete to replace three of these institutions with purpose built group homes in the immediate future.

Following the aforementioned Government decision of 13th August 1982, an inter-departmental committee comprising officials of the Department of Education, Finance, Health and Justice was established to review the operation and financing of the homes. The inaugural meeting of the Committee took place in the Department of Health on 17th December 1982 and subsequently met on 12 occasions. Following a detailed discussion at the inaugural meeting, the Committee adopted the following terms of reference: (1)to determine the financial system most appropriate to children’s Residential Homes, based on an examination of their financial records and their perspective financial position; (2)to recommend appropriate transitional financial arrangements on transfer of responsibility for the 24 Residential Homes (former Industrial Schools) from the Minister for Education to the Department of Health; (3)to identify acceptable cost and other guidelines appropriate to monitoring and financing children’s residential homes in the future. 345

Ultimately, the Committee rejected the capitation method of financing Residential Homes and recommended ‘the funding of residential homes by way of annual allocation, based on budgets agreed with the local health board for projected expenditure, and paid monthly in advance’. The Committee also noted that while the proposed transfer of responsibility for the homes from the Department of Education to the Department of Health was a welcome step in clarifying responsibility, this by itself would not be sufficient. It argued that: It must be coupled with a clear statement of overall policy in elation to residential care services setting out the rationale for care of each client group intended to be served by the homes, standards of care to be provided, both in relation to accommodation and maintenance, and to the quality of the care input from staff. We have found no evidence of the existence of such a statement without which in our opinion the monitoring process cannot function.

On 25th October 1984, the Department of Finance wrote to the Department of Health agreeing with recommendations of the Committee.

A key recommendation of the Committee was that the Department of Health, ‘as a matter of urgency formulate and promulgate service objectives in relation to the care of children to guide health board policy’. In late 1984, the Department of Health produced a detailed memo on the operation of residential care in Ireland as well as outlining a philosophy for the future operation of residential care in Ireland.346 In relation to the operationalisation of the recently agreed budget system of funding, the memo reported that: Responsibility for financial control of individual homes rests with an officer designated by the local health board’s Finance Officer. They have reported coming up against a number of problems in implementing the budget system one being with homes’ accountants and auditors. In the case of some homes Officers had serious doubts abut their objectivity and hence the impartiality of the accounts submitted. Also, officers found that the homes’ accountants were over-estimating pay and non-pay expenditure for ‘bargaining’ purposes. Discrepancies also appeared in the number of staff actually employed in the homes as against alleged complements returned at various stages to the Department. All this resulted in long delays before homes could be told of their budgets for 1984. Hopefully, most of this can be put down to teething problems and the mutual understanding arising out of this year’s exercise should facilitate speedy agreement to budgets next year.347

The memo went to outline that within the 41 Residential Homes managed by the Department of Health, some 1,200 places were available, but that they were rarely full to capacity. More significantly, the memo noted the ongoing decline in the number of children in residential care, the primary reason for this being ‘the Department’s policy of trying to maintain children in their own family setting as long as possible or placing them in foster care instead of in a residential home’. The memo acknowledged that there would always be a need for residential care for certain categories of children, but that: Based on past trends expansion in the number of residential places available in children’s homes appears unwarranted. In fact, our view is that residential provision in children’s homes should stabilise at something below 1000 places by the end of this decade. This will require a reduction in the size of some homes, which we hope can be achieved through our capital programme, and through the possible closure of some individual units.348

In April 1986, the Department of Health published a Report on Health Services covering the period 1983-86. On the funding of child care services, the report outlined that: A new system whereby the local health board funds children’s homes directly on the basis of agreed budgets was introduced on the 1st January, 1984 to replace the highly unsatisfactory capitation system in operation for over a hundred years. Homes had found that despite regular revisions, capitation rates tended to lag behind real increases in the cost of looking after children and did not take account of differing cost structures in the homes. As a result, by the end of 1983 some homes had accrued considerable deficits. These deficits, totalling almost £1 million were cleared in 1984 in conjunction with the introduction of the budget system. The new funding arrangement is sufficiently flexible to enable health boards to respond to the particular needs of each individual home having regard to its staffing and clientele. It also brings homes and boards into a much closer working relationship than before. This gives boards a useful opportunity to re-organise the residential sector on a regional basis, broadly on the lines recommended by the Task Force on Child care Services. Each health board is now considering residential provision for child care in its area and hopes to agree future roles and functions with each of the homes in the near future.351

In a review of the Special Schools operating under the auspices of the Department of Education, a review by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 1990 highlighted a number of areas of concern. The report noted that the capitation system of funding the schools had ceased in 1981 and the schools were now funded on the basis of an annual grant. The report observed: It would be reasonable to suggest that the changeover to full financing by the State in 1981 should have led to greater involvement by the Department in the management and control of the schools but this is not the case. Specifically the Department did not:- (a) ensure that as full a service as the available resources were capable of providing was being provided; the schools were being funded on the basis that such a service would be provided. (b) take steps to ensure the introduction of procedures for the efficient running of the schools. (c) Regulate the schools or have an effective input into their admission and management policies. At the Finglas Children’s Centre, the Board of Management on which the Department of Education and Justice are represented acts only in an advisory capacity while, in contrast, Trinity House Board of management has executive powers. At St. Joseph’s there is no Board of Management as the religious order was unwilling to agree to the Department’s request to have a Board of management appointed when the new funding arrangements were introduced in 1981. (d) Establish a coherent policy on manning levels in the schools and consider the impact on school staffing of the public service embargo on recruitment. Indeed, the Department itself broke the public service embargo on some occasions by approving new posts in the schools and on other occasions by retrospectively sanctioning appointments already made in the schools. (e) operate a budgetary system which would ensure that the annual financial needs of the schools were being properly assessed. (f) Monitor the schools’ finances on an ongoing and regular basis. The absence of monitoring may have been a contributory factor to the scale of the Supplementary Estimate needed in 1990 to cover expenditure overruns by the schools. (g) ensure that adequate financial details were being provided in the monthly school returns. The returns submitted to the Department give a detailed breakdown of non-pay costs but the information provided in relation to pay costs (approximately 70 percent of total costs) is totally inadequate e.g. additional costs relating to weekend duties and for relief work involving the engagement of temporary staff are not revealed in the returns. (h) finalise the execution of a Deed of Trust for St. Joseph’s although it is aware since 1978 that such a deed is essential since the State has invested some £5 million in buildings and facilities. (The land at Clonmel is owned by the religious order). (i) carry out regular audits of systems and procedures in the schools.354

The Department of Education in their response to the Comptroller and Auditor General noted that such schools were traditionally managed by religious Congregations and that: The system operated in a climate of trust necessary for the support of the difficult work involved and the Department, having regard to this feature, did not unduly interfere in the day to day running of the schools.

By mid-1980s, the majority of a declining number of children in residential care were in homes funded on a budget basis by the Department of Health and with the health boards having a role in the day-to-day operation of the service. The Department of Education had responsibility for a small number of schools for young people who entered care, primarily through the juvenile justice system, but also a small number who were placed in secure accommodation by the health boards. The Department of Education were reviewing their role in relation to the provision of secure care and by the end of the decade had concluded that they were not the appropriate Department to have this responsibility, but it was a further decade and a half before they finally relinquished responsibility for such centres. At the end of the 1980s, one experienced childcare worker gave his overview of the changes that had occurred in residential care in the previous 20 years: Dramatic and sweeping changes have taken place in residential care over the past twenty years. Large institutions have been broken up, staffing ratios increased and staff training commenced. Residential care has become more child orientated with a greater understanding of children and their problems. Yet the old stigma remains. Residential care is often blamed for causing the very ills of society for which it is trying to treat.355

In the early 1990s, the Department of Education argued that the centres operated by them did not ‘have the capacity, nor should they be expected to cater for the following situations: (a) youths whose primary difficulty stems from serious psychiatric problems which require intensive and ongoing attention. (b) youths whose behaviour is such as to place them in the category unruly/depraved. (c) youths in need of intensive therapy on foot of sexual problems.’ In the case of categories (a) and (c), they argued that: It is the firm view of the Department of Education that referral of serious psychiatric and sexually disturbed cases to centres for young offenders constitutes a serious and potentially very dangerous failing within the present system. What is required in such cases is the provision of a suitable dedicated and resourced facility which would focus on addressing the real needs of such people. It is the view of the Department of Education that responsibility for the provision of such facilities rests with the Department of Health. However, repeated attempts by the Department of Education to secure acceptance of responsibility for this area by the Department of Health, have proved unsuccessful.

The response by the Government to the Report was that ‘a study will be undertaken by the Minister for Justice in consultation with the Minister for Education to determine the scope and type of facility necessary to deal adequately with the problem of young female offenders.358 In September 1986, a study group was established with terms of reference ‘to determine the scope and type of facility necessary to deal adequately with the problem of young female offenders and to furnish a report.’359 The Group, which reported in February 1988, noted that the only residential facility within the juvenile justice system for females was Cuan Mhuire Assessment Unit in Collins Avenue, Whitehall, Dublin 9, which was opened in 1984 to cater for young females between the ages of 10-16. The function of the centre was to allow the courts to remand young girls for a period of up to three weeks to facilitate an assessment of their needs. To assist the Group with their task, the Probation and Welfare Service and the Department of Education surveyed young female offenders under the age of 16 known to them between January 1985 and June 1986 in order to ascertain the need for residential care. The report stated that from the information gathered it was clear that, in addition to an assessment unit, there was need for a facility that could provide adequate long-term care for a small group of young female offenders who were particularly difficult or troublesome and for whom none of the community based facilities, residential homes or hostels currently in existence would be able to provide the necessary service.

The Group concluded that there was a need for a facility which would incorporate a remand and assessment unit, a long-term unit and a secure unit, to collectively accommodate 25 girls with responsibility for the facility resting with the Department of Education. The year after the Study Group on Young Female Offenders reported, an Interdepartmental Committee on Crime was established, which reported in December 1989. The Department of Education, in their submission to the Interdepartmental Committee, argued: ..as it would be considered that children and young people committed by the Courts are primarily in need of care and education, places of detention, industrial schools and reformatory schools have come under the Minister for Education (Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924, fourth part of schedule). The Minister for Education considers that this situation should now be changed in relation to secure centres and that responsibility for such centres should be transferred to the Minister for Justice. There are a number of reasons for the Ministers view (1) The fact that the Department of Education is not directly involved with the Courts, Gardai or Probation and Welfare Service impedes its ability to respond to needs. (2) The Department of Education is not otherwise involved in the provision of security and does not have expertise in this area. (3) Many of the difficulties the Department has experienced in operating centres involving an element of security derive from the basic and unavoidable orientation of staff towards care and education rather than custody. (4) Because of their near-adult physique combined with unpredictable, explosive behaviour, young offenders in the 15/16 age group are among the most difficult of all offenders to handle; it is odd for the Department of Justice freed from responsibility for such a group. (5) It is exceptional in European terms to find responsibility for secure provision for young offenders with an education Ministry. The reason in our circumstances appears to have been the fact that the earlier industrial and reformatory schools were conducted by religious orders.

This viewpoint marked a significant shift in official thinking in the Department of Education, signalling that their direct involvement in the managing and administration of Reformatory and Industrial Schools should cease and be transferred to Justice. However, as noted earlier, it was not until 2007 that the transfer suggested by Education formally took place. The Inter-departmental report outlined that: The Group considers that the main problems in this area are, firstly, the fact that, other than the remand and assessment facilities at Cuan Mhuire, there are no residential places at all provided for young female offenders. Secondly, as regards male offenders, there are insufficient number of residential places for the 14-16 years age bracket. Apart from being a problem in its own right, this also causes difficulties in that less troublesome offenders must be housed with the more disruptive type of offenders. In addition, there is the problem of male offenders, who have been placed in a secure centre, returning when they have served their term, direct to their communities without any opportunity of preparing in advance to adjust to normal life.