4,228 entries for Finance

The Children Act 2001 also amended the Child Care Act 1991 by allowing for establishment of special care facilities for children who required secure accommodation. This amendment was necessitated by a series of actions that sought clarification on the implementation of section 5 of the Child Care Act 1991. The key issue was by what criteria the provision in the Act stipulating that health boards ‘take such steps as are reasonable’ be evaluated and what constituted ‘suitable accommodation’ for homeless children?39 The first substantial challenge to the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless children came in 1994. In the case of PS v The Eastern Health Board40, it was argued that the Eastern Health Board (EHB) had failed to provide for the welfare of the applicant under section 3 of the Act and to make available suitable accommodation for him under section 5 of the Act. The applicant, who was 14 years of age at the time, had a history of multiple care placements from a young age and had been discharged from a Residential Home and spent 35 consecutive nights sleeping rough before the EHB had agreed to intervene and provide him with accommodation. By the time the case reached the High Court, the applicant had been placed in a health board premises along with another child and a number of security staff. The EHB made the point that, under the Child Care Act 1991, they had no powers of civil detention and, if the applicant would not co-operate, they were limited in the service they could provide.

In a series of further High Court actions, the courts identified a gap in Irish childcare legislation in that health boards were adjudged not to have powers of civil detainment. The judgments resulting from these actions led to the establishment of a small number of high support and special care units for children by the Department of Health, in conjunction with the health boards.41 However, the number of children before the High Court continued to grow and, in July 1998, Justice Kelly issued an order to force the Minister for Health to provide sufficient accommodation for the children appearing before him in order to vindicate their constitutional rights. In his conclusion, Mr Justice Kelly stated: It is no exaggeration to characterise what has gone on a scandal. I have had evidence of inter-departmental wrangles over demarcation lines going on for months, seemingly endless delays in drafting and redrafting legislation, policy that appears to be made only to be reversed and a waste of public resources on. For example, going through an entire planning process for the Portrane development only for the Minister to change his mind, thereby necessitating the whole process being gone through again. The addressing of the rights of the young people that I have to deal with appears to be bogged down in a bureaucratic and administrative quagmire. I have come to the conclusion that the response of the Minister to date falls far short of what this Court was reasonably entitled to expect concerning the provision of appropriate facilities for young people with difficulties of the type with which I am dealing.42

The Children Act 2001 inserted a new section into the Child Care Act 1991 (section 23) imposing on the health boards a duty to seek a special care order in the District Court where the behaviour of the child or young person was such that it imposed a real and substantial risk to his or her health, safety, development and welfare and where it was necessary in the interests of the child that such a course of action be adopted. By 2005, three special care units were established with an approved bed capacity of 30, in addition to 13 high support units with an approved bed capacity of 93.43 In 2007, 34 children were placed in special care units, down from 55 in 2004.44

In 2000, the Education (Welfare) Act was passed by the House of the Oireachtas. This Act replaced the School Attendance Acts 1926 to 1967.45 It raised the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16, or the completion of three years of post-primary education, whichever is the later. The Act established a National Educational Welfare Board, the objective of which is to develop, co-ordinate and implement school attendance policy so as to ensure that every child in the State attends a recognised school or otherwise receives an appropriate education; appoints education welfare officers to work in close co-operation with schools, teachers, parents and community/voluntary bodies with a view to encouraging regular school attendance and developing strategies to reduce absenteeism and early school leaving; maintain a register of children receiving education outside the recognised school structure and assess the adequacy of such education on an ongoing basis. Reform of this area of child welfare had been long sought, with both the Kennedy Report, and in the same year, the Commission on the Garda Síochána (generally known as the Conroy report), highlighting the inadequacy of the system for regulating school attendance. The Report argued that the Gardaí had been called on to do many duties that had no connection with their primary duties as policemen. Included in a menu of extraneous duties was the enforcement of the School Attendance Acts and recommendation 1188 argued that steps should be taken to relieve the Garda Síochána from the obligation to carry out, most, if not all, of the extraneous duties imposed upon them.46 This view simply gave voice to a long-established trend where from the early 1950s onwards, the Gardaí had scaled down their involvement in the implementation of the School Attendance Acts and the only areas where school attendance officers had a significant presence were in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford where school attendance committees were in operation. The Kennedy Report had argued that: Persistent absence from school may be one of the early warning signs of the existence of families and children in difficulties. Such difficulties may be physical, psychiatric or psychological. Early identification of and treatment of the causes will, therefore, be necessary if the break-up of the family is to be avoided. Other possible causes are many and varied. Illness, inadequate parents, unemployment of the father and the mother working, indifference of the parents to education may all lead to absence of one or more children from school. The child may be experiencing difficulties at school, may have physical disabilities such as hearing or sight defects. Backwardness may make it difficult for him to keep up with his class, unsuitable home conditions may make it impossible to prepare homework with consequence reluctance to attend school.47

Thus, rather than viewing non-attendance at school through the prism of deviance or criminality and the resulting mode of intervention, punishment: non-attendance at school was viewed as symptomatic of a more deep-rooted maladjustment in the child’s life and requiring professional intervention in the shape of social workers, psychiatrists and psychologists. Thus, the Gardaí, irrespective of their reluctance to remain involved with school attendance duties because of operational restraints, had no role in this new understanding of the causes of non-attendance at school and modes of intervention in solving the problem. The Kennedy report also stated that ‘It is obvious that the present School attendance system needs to be re-examined and a more efficient system evolved’,48 a statement that was to be echoed in numerous subsequent reports that generally looked at the issue of school attendance in passing.

For those working in the area of child welfare, particularly, social workers and care workers, the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005 provides for a system of statutory registration for 12 health and social care professions,49 to ensure that health and social care professionals providing services are properly qualified, competent and fit to practice. This is the first time such professionals are regulated under statute. The Act also provides for the establishment of a fitness to practice structure to deal with complaints and other disciplinary matters.

The Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) was set up on an administrative basis in 1999 to inspect social services in Ireland. The inspectorate emerged from the recommendations of the Report on the Inquiry into Madonna House, which reported in May 1996 and recommended that an Inspectorate of Social Services be established on a statutory basis, which would have responsibility for ‘quality assurance and audit of childcare practice in all areas of personal social services, including the children’s residential sector.’50 From 1999 to 2007 the work of the SSI focused on children in care, primarily on inspection of residential care. In 2004 a pilot inspection of foster care services was conducted and this was followed in 2006 with inspections of two private foster care agencies. The SSI conducted inspections of statutory residential childcare services (i.e. services managed by the Health Service Executive (HSE), formerly the health boards), under statutory powers contained in section 69 of the Child Care Act 1991. SSI inspectors are authorised to enter any premises maintained by the HSE under the Act and examine the state and management of the premises and the treatment of children there and examine such records and interview such members of staff as they see fit. The Department of Health and Children administered it until May 2007, when it was established on a statutory basis as the Office of the Chief Inspector of Social Services within the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA).51

In addition, the Ombudsman for Children’s Office was established in 2004, following the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002, which commenced in its entirety on 25th April 2004. The Ombudsman for Children can investigate an action by a public body, a school or a voluntary hospital where it appears that the action has or may have adversely affected a child, and the action was or may have been taken without proper authority, taken on irrelevant grounds, the result of negligence or carelessness, based on erroneous or incomplete information, improperly discriminatory, based on an undesirable administrative practice, or otherwise contrary to fair or sound administration. The Ombudsman for Children can investigate an action on her own initiative or where a complaint has been made to her. A complaint can be made by a child or by an adult on behalf of a child.52

The development of guidelines on the reporting, investigation and management of child abuse cases in Ireland began at a meeting in the Department of Health in May 1975, the purpose of which was to discuss the problem of ‘non accidental injury to children’ that had been brought to the attention of the Department by medical consultants from Crumlin and Harcourt St Hospitals. It was agreed at the meeting that (1)there was a significant problem of non-accidental injury to children in Ireland; (2)that the position should be examined and procedures suggested for dealing with such cases and for ensuring the co-operation of parties dealing with such cases; and (3)that a central register of such cases should be examined.

Following the meeting, a committee was established to address the above issues, comprised principally of medical doctors, a superintendent public health nurse, a senior ISPCC officer, a medical social worker and two civil servants. A sub-group was subsequently formed to draw up a detailed memorandum on the matters considered by the Committee. Emerging from this, and assisted by information obtained from British authorities, the first report of the Department of Health Committee on Non-Accidental Injury was published in March 1976, providing a basis for all subsequent child abuse guidelines issued by central government.53

The focus of the Department of Health report was essentially clinical, emphasising the need for early identification of ‘battered’ children. It provided an ‘index of suspicion’ to assist the identification of child abuse, which was almost entirely based on physical symptoms of injury, with a proportionately marginal emphasis on ‘nutritional deprivation, neglect and emotional deprivation and trauma’.54 It defined the case conference as an essential part of the ‘team effort’ required for the investigation and management of suspected non-accidental injury (NAI). Overall responsibility for calling the conference was assigned to the Director of Community Care (a medical doctor) though the delegation of this function ‘to a senior member of his medical staff’ was permitted. The list of suggested attendees demonstrated a clear expectation of significant involvement by hospital staff in the management of the case.

The report also recommended the establishment and maintenance of what it described as a ‘central registry’ of cases ‘to act as a reference for personnel concerned to ascertain whether a child was already widely known to different medical practitioners, hospitals or social workers as a case of suspected or diagnosed non-accidental injury. The placement of the register in a paediatric department, health board or the ISPCC was mooted, with the suggestion that, in Dublin, it should be administered by a senior medical officer in the child health section of the EHB to facilitate medical involvement and medical confidentiality. While it was also suggested that ‘every effort should be made to provide adequate community care services to the families involved’, and awareness-raising amongst community agencies was recommended the report and its recommendations were primarily intended for medical staff. Responsibility for overall coordination of services was to belong to the Department of Health, while it was recommended that the health boards establish area committees, which would comprise of appropriate health board staff and hospital representatives.

Although the responses of some professional bodies e.g. the Irish Association of Social Workers and the Eastern Health Board Senior Social Workers Group, were critical of the 1976 report’s over-concentration on the detection of physical signs of child maltreatment, and its neglect of the emotional, psychological and social dimensions of child abuse, the template laid down in this report formed the basis of the guidance documents that followed it over the next decade. Guidelines up to 1987 were based on a conceptualisation of child abuse as ‘non accidental injury’, which could be addressed by a sound system of reporting, with medical and legal interventions. A Memorandum on Non-Accidental Injury to Children was published in 1977, based largely on the 1976 report.55 The Memorandum acknowledged that its focus was mainly on physical abuse; stating that ‘in cases of injury arising from emotional deprivation or neglect, the evidence of such injury might not always be as clear cut’ and that procedures for intervention in such cases would have to be considered separately. The nature of the earlier recommended ‘central register’ had been changed, reflecting some disagreement about its purpose and function, which had been specified in written responses to the 1976 report. It was now recommended that a ‘list’ be kept by the Director of Community Care ‘to help assess the extent of the problem’ and to provide information to other professionals on whether a child had previously suffered a NAI. It was suggested that the list be reviewed regularly with details ‘expunged’ when suspicions proved to be unfounded.

The memorandum laid quite strong emphasis on the requirement for staff training in the various medical and community based services for children and families to improve ‘knowledge, awareness and vigilance’. It also acknowledged that there may be legal deficiencies requiring reform and therefore recommended review to identify desirable legal changes and innovations. It also drew attention to the necessity for An Garda Síochána to be notified if a possible breach of criminal law was indicated.

Denis Greene, in one of the first published commentaries on legal aspects of non-accidental injury to children, observed that: while I have acted for the Eastern Health Board and its statutory predecessors for many years, it has really only been in the past decade that I have been called upon to deal with cases involving children at risk. They have increased in number steadily over that period. I cannot say whether this indicates a real increase in absolute terms or whether the frequency of occurrence is not greater than in past years but more cases are being discovered because of the larger number of social workers now working in the community. Possibly both factors are involved.56