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In 1980, the Department of Health published the first complete set of Irish child protection guidelines, entitled Guidelines on the Identification and Management of Non-Accidental Injury to Children.57 A list of potential clinical indicators of child abuse was again provided, and the necessity for the co-operation of non-health board professionals was emphasised. As the title implies, the focus was still heavily on physical abuse of children, with ‘nutritional deprivation’ and ‘signs of general neglect’ merely cited as part of the ‘index of suspicion’ of NAI. The roles of the Directors of Community Care were more clearly defined as responsible for the management of child abuse in their areas, representing a slight shift to the community from the hospital or clinical setting reflected in the earlier documents. Recommended procedures for the investigation of reports, and the ‘monitoring and co-ordination’ of child abuse cases were outlined, the case conference retained a central position and the maintenance of a ‘list’ of suspected and actual cases of non-accidental injury was again recommended. The rights to involvement of parents in case conferences or decision making were not mentioned. Another set of guidelines with the same title was published in 1983 with basically the same contents with slightly more detailed guidance on the transfer of information and the role of the health boards in circulating the guidelines. Despite the fact that there was some awareness amongst child protection services at that time of child sexual abuse, it was not mentioned in the guidance.58

A more radical change was evident in the next set of guidelines, issued in 1987. A name change to Child Abuse Guidelines signified a broadening out of the concept of child abuse from NAI to encompass sexual as well as physical abuse.59 The Irish Council for Civil Liberties sponsored report into child sexual abuse in Ireland in 1988 argued that: Discovery of child sexual abuse as a major problem is recent in Ireland, as it is internationally, and has developed rapidly. In 1983, the Irish Association of Social Workers hosted a pioneering workshop on child sexual abuse, from which a working party and the Incest Crisis Service developed. By 1985, the Rape Crisis Centres were identifying survivors of child sexual abuse as a major client group.60

In recent years historians have explored the degree to which knowledge of the sexual abuse of children was known in Ireland before the 1980s, in most cases examining the work of the Carrigan Committee. In June 1930, the Government appointed a committee ‘to consider whether the following Statutes require amendment and, if so, in what respect, namely the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1880, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 as modified by later Statutes, and to consider whether any new legislation is feasible to deal in a suitable manner with the problem of Juvenile Prostitution (that is prostitution under the age of 21).’61 The Committee was chaired by William Carrigan, KC Perhaps the most significant submission received by the Committee was from the Garda Commissioner at the time, Eoin O’Duffy. O’Duffy reported on what he viewed as general immorality of the country: an alarming aspect is the number of cases with interference with girls under 15, and even under 13 and under 11, which come before the courts. There are in most cases heard of accidentally by the Garda, and are very rarely the result of a direct complaint. It is generally agreed that reported cases do not exceed 15 percent of those actually happening.62

O’Duffy recommended that the Criminal Justice Amendment Act 1885 required revision. Noting that there were 31 prosecutions for defilement of girls under 16 in Dublin City between 1924 and 1929, and that ‘offences on children between the ages of 9 and 16 are, unfortunately, increasing in the country’ and ‘cases have occurred recently in which children between 4 and 5 have been interfered with’, 63the age at which such defilements should be classed as a felony should be raised from 13 to 16. In addition, any attempt to commit this offence should be classed as a felony. He also added that for any offences against girls under the age of 13, he strongly advised the ‘cat’ be used and ‘not just a few strokes, but the most severe application the medical advisor will permit, having regard only to the physical condition and health of the offender’.64The Committee reported in August 1931, and made 21 recommendations, broadly endorsing the recommendations made by O’Duffy and others, including raising the age of consent to 18 and extending the time period for commencing a prosecution.65

The other notable change in the Guidelines was the emphasis on inter-agency cooperation, and the clear identification of the roles of various professionals, such as the community care social worker, public health nurse, the child psychiatrist and ‘others’ including teachers, day care staff and residential staff. The role of the Director of Community Care in investigation and management was given a strengthened position in comparison to the dominant role of hospital staff in previous guidance. However, the emphasis was still on assaultive abuse and neither neglect nor emotional abuse was given any specific or separate consideration. Physical abuse and sexual abuse were described in terms of signs and symptoms rather than definitions, thus excluding contextual factors such as intention of the alleged perpetrator, the age differential or relationship between themselves and the victim, or the environment in which abuse occurred.

Over the following decade, a series of events changed the public perception of child abuse irrevocably, both in terms of increasing awareness and higher expectations of a range of professionals in the child protection network. What became known as the Kilkenny Incest case66, the ‘X’ case67, the Kelly Fitzgerald68, the West of Ireland Farmer69 case, and the Fr Brendan Smith70 case had broadened the public view of the nature and prevalence of child sexual abuse, but concern had also grown about emotional abuse and neglect. In addition, the Madonna House Inquiry71 and the television documentary ‘Dear Daughter’72 had combined to inform the public about dimensions of institutional abuse.73 One long-standing member of the Irish Association of Care Workers described the mood at the time amongst care workers a follows: In my 17 years experience of direct work in child care, I never witnessed such disappointment and despair among my colleagues. Since the Madonna House child sexual abuse scandal broke 20 months ago, there have been a stream of further allegations and suggestions of allegations against care staff, in various care centres around the country. This has led to fear, upset and anxiety among conscientious professional child care workers.74

There were also the beginnings of concern about the potentially intrusive character of child protection work and a growing awareness that early intervention of a more supportive and less forensic nature would provide a more effective means of assisting vulnerable families, thus lessening the potential for future harm.75

During the same decade, the aforementioned Child Care Act 1991 had been implemented, and the services operated by the health boards in respect of children had been restructured. In addition, the Irish Catholic Bishops also produced a framework for responding to child sexual abuse by priests and religious in 1996.76 The question of introducing mandatory reporting had been raised and dropped, and the responsibility for the management of child abuse was re-assigned from the medical directors of community care (whose posts were abolished) to the newly created posts of child care manager in each community care area.77 Additional posts of ‘community child care worker’ and ‘family support worker’ had been added to community care teams. It was in this context that Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection & Welfare of Children were developed by a multi-disciplinary working group appointed by the Junior Minister with responsibility for Health and Children and published by the Department of Health and Children in 1999. A protocol had been published by the Department of Health in 1995 outlining the steps to be taken by An Garda Síochána and the health board when notifying each other of suspected child sexual abuse and this was incorporated into Children First, along with broader definitions of child abuse which was now classified into four types: neglect, emotional abuse (including the witnessing of domestic violence), physical abuse and sexual abuse, each of which was explicitly defined within a broad context. Children First included a section on family support, which was recommended for early intervention into cases where harm to a child had not reached the ‘abuse’ threshold.

The guidance offered in the document went beyond identification and investigation to overall case management which included assessment, planning, intervention and review. Unlike previous guidelines, Children First was underpinned by a set of principles which included participation by parents/carers and children in conferences and the development of child protection plans. The ‘list’ mentioned in earlier guidelines was restructured into the Child Protection Notification System which was to be managed by a multi-disciplinary group of professionals.

Recognition was given to groups of particularly vulnerable children including those in out of home care, those with disabilities and those who were homeless. Acknowledgement of the potential for abuse by persons in the caring professions was indicated by a section on the steps to take if allegations were made against employees or volunteers within a service. Children First stated that it was intended to provide ‘overarching’ guidance, but that local areas and organisations providing services to children and families would be expected to produce policies and guidelines tailored to their own context. The provision of child protection training to a broad range of disciplines was identified as compulsory, and all health board staff were declared eligible to receive reports of concerns about children. Children First also recommends the establishment of local and regional child protection committees who would hold a monitoring role in relation to the operation of the guidelines.

While Children First was officially ‘launched’ in October 1999, its implementation status has remained unclear up to the present time. ‘Implementation officers’ were appointed in each health board area. A National Implementation Group (later renamed the National Implementation Advisory Group, was formed and in addition, the Health Board Executive Agency set up a Children First Resource Team which issued guidance on assessment and the operation of the Child Protection Notification System. Both these groups were disbanded in 2003, despite the fact that the guidelines had not been fully implemented on a national basis. Training officers and advice and information officers were appointed, the latter post carrying responsibility for liaising with and providing Children First training for community and voluntary organisations. The Social Services Inspectorate published a report in 2003 which reviewed the implementation process, and while it was generally positive about the advancement that had been made, it noted that progress in relation to Garda/health board cooperation, the child protection committees and planning for family support services was inadequate. Problems of staff retention were identified, as well as a lingering tendency for individual health boards to use their own discretion about how to implement the guidelines.

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.

When the Government launched Children First in 1999, it made a commitment to review and evaluate the effectiveness of the guidelines within a reasonable time frame. No such review had occurred up to the publication of the Ferns Inquiry78 in 2005, but in his response to the report, the then Minister for Children, Mr Brian Lenihan TD, undertook to conduct a review of national compliance with the guidelines. To this end, advertisements were placed in the national newspapers inviting interested parties to comment on Children First, meetings were held with key stakeholders and Secretary Generals of government departments and a study was commissioned to explore the views of service users. Responses to the consultation process indicated that while there were difficulties and variations in practice around the country, there was general satisfaction with the contents of Children First and that most of the obstacles to their implementation were concerned with local operations and infrastructures rather than the guidelines per se. Recommendations from the review suggested that revised guidelines should spell out more clearly the roles of different government departments in protecting children and promoting their welfare and require each public body to produce relevant policies and procedures. Measures to reduce re-offending were also proposed, including Garda vetting. The review noted current difficulties for members of the public and professionals in accessing the system in order to report concerns and suggested measures to alleviate this situation. Methods to quality assure practices in the different areas, early intervention and the establishment of local and regional structures to support the child protection services were also suggested.79 The service users’ study focused more generally on the child protection system but questioned the usefulness of the use of the ‘inconclusive’ category as an outcome of investigation given the difficulties that it caused. It also recommended the adoption of a differential response to reported concerns about children.80 The Ombudsman for Children also raised concern about the implementation of Children First in November 2008 following a number of complaints to her office, and she announced an investigation into HSE child protection practices in that regard.

The issues highlighted above, the age of criminal responsibility, the inspection of children’s homes, the shift from residential care to family based services, repealing the Children Act 1908 and the unification and co-ordination of childcare services were all core recommendations of the Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools’ Systems in 1970. They were of course, not the only issues that concerned the Committee, as the discussion on child protection guidelines above testifies, but they provide an indication of the slow pace of progress in achieving the recommendations. It is evident that broad agreement on many of the issues highlighted in the aforementioned Report was achieved in the decade between 1965 and 1975, and it was in the implementation of change that blockages were encountered. Prior to the publication, and indeed establishment, of the Committee to Enquire into the Reformatory and Industrial Schools System, in addition to the well-known Tuairim Report, a number of other significant reports and commentary were circulated that, in part, anticipated and addressed concerns that were to be highlighted in the report of the Committee. Therefore, in understanding the context in which the Reformatory and Industrial School Systems report was compiled and the basis for their recommendations, a brief overview of these reports and commentaries are presented. Before doing so, however, the paper provides an overview of the data on children in care from the 1960s to present, to place the policy debates in context.

In this section of the paper, a broad overview of the number of children in substitute care is firstly provided, before exploring in more detail the numbers of children in different forms of residential care.81 From the foundation of the Irish State, the numbers of children in alternative care, particularly residential care, were relatively high with upwards of 12,000 children in care in the 1950s.82 During the mid-1950s, the numbers in alternative care dropped rapidly and by the end of the 1960s there were just over 1,200 children boarded-out or at nurse and approximately 3,000 in various forms of residential care. The numbers began to rise again from the early 1970s. From the late 1980s, the numbers in substitute care began to rise again, with just over 5,000 children in substitute care, but what is notable is that the majority of children are now in foster care rather than residential care, as was the case until the early 1980s.83 As shown in figure 184, the trend towards the decline in the number of children in care (defined as children in various forms of foster care and residential care) continued throughout the early to mid-1970s, but increased somewhat in the late 1970s.85 A decline was evident again in the early 1980s, but the number of children in care has been rising steadily since the mid-1980s, with currently over 5,000 children in Statecare. Figure 1: Children in care, 1970-2006 Figure 2: Children in care, 1970-2006 per 1,000 children under 18