4,228 entries for Historical Context

The long-standing Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers146 also published a series of recommendations on the future of child welfare in Ireland in 1970. Summarised in a letter to the editor in the Irish Times, the Committee argued for: The urgent need for a new Children’s Act. The urgent need for co-ordination of departments dealing with children at State level, and at county level through a children’s committee. The need for trained social workers as children’s officers, probation officers, school attendance officers, career guidance advisors and youth workers. A sincere effort is needed to keep the child in his own family and only when necessary a substitute family. Emergency care in an institution should be brief. We need to reduce the emotional disturbance caused by our present system. To prevent institutionalism fosterage should be encouraged by improving conditions, and allowing a more realistic maintenance (at present this varies from 12s 6d to £3 per week, whereas institutional care, which causes most emotional disturbance, costs £8 5s. per week per child). Scattered family group homes such as those established in Kilkenny, are better substitutes than institutions. Where institutional care is inevitable, regulations should govern qualifications and number of staff, and special efforts should be made to enable these children maintain contact with their families. A visiting committee should follow the progress of each child through school reports and school medical reports. Backwardness should be detected early and dealt with in special cases. All successful pupils should be given the opportunity of vocational or secondary education. At present the proportion is unreal. Above all, the Joint Committee deplores the present practice of transferring deprived children from institution to institution, even at the age for employment. • After-care for these children is seriously neglected. Social workers are essential for career guidance and for placing the children in the normal community, in hostels, or preferably, families.147

The Department of Health were also giving active consideration to the future of residential child welfare in Ireland, in particular their responsibilities under the Children Acts and sections 55 and 56 of the Health Act 1953.148 On 23rd September 1968, Mr O’Rourke in the Department of Health wrote a memo addressed to Miss Murray149 and Miss Clandillon, the Lady Inspectors of Boarded-out Children. The memo argued that the Department of Health: should, at this stage, review the services, dealt with in this division, which are provided for children who come within the scope of the Children Acts and the relevant provisions of the 1953 Act. What I have in mind is that we should consider the adequacy and inadequacies of the services provided for boarded-out children, those placed in approved schools and those who are at nurse; that we should aim at suggesting improvements which might be made in the existing services or innovations which are required to meet needs that at present are unfulfilled; consider the type of service which will be developing during the next decade or so and which will have to be organised within the framework of the regional service envisaged in the White Paper; consider, in particular, in the context of those regional arrangements, the type of case work which will need to be done at local level and the appropriate nature of the regional and departmental supervision which such services will need and, finally, study the services for which we, in this Department, have responsibility in the context of the total services required by the deprived child in general.

His memo went on to note that having reviewed the available statistical data on children in care, there was a: constant and continuing decline in the number of children boarded-out; the consistent growth in those being adopted and a continuing fall in the number of children at nurse. The disquieting feature which it also shows is the increase in the number of children maintained by health authorities in approved schools despite the fact that policy, to date, has been to encourage boarding out or adoption to the greatest possible extent.

In particular he wished the inspectors to critically examine the service as it exists at present and comment, not alone on its advantages, but on the deficiencies existing in it.

Mr O’Rourke observed that it appeared increasingly difficult to recruit foster parents and this needed to be addressed and that the supervision of children, both ‘at nurse’ and ‘boarded-out’ required attention. In relation to children maintained by health authorities in Industrial Schools, he noted that such children were not subject to any inspection by the Department of Health and consideration of how best to address this issue was required. Finally, Mr O’Rourke noted that the existing range of services was fragmented, and as a consequence ‘three departments all have partial responsibility for the provision of limited services for children who, for reasons varying from poverty to delinquency, come under central government control’ and this state of affairs ‘is not a satisfactory one’. While acknowledging that the Commission of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools, a Commission, which in his view, ‘shows an uninhibited tendency to exceed its restricted terms of reference’ might deal with this issue in their report, Mr O’Rourke argued: what may be needed most of all is a broadly based commission with very wide terms of reference which would enable it to inquire into the services available for all classes of deprived children and to make recommendations about the manner in which they would be provided in the future.

Both Miss Murray and Miss Clandillon provided detailed written responses to the memo and these provide a snapshot of thinking in the Department of Health on the cusp of substantial changes in child welfare in Ireland. Responding to the query as to why the numbers of boarded–out children had declined over the previous decade, Miss Murray attributed it to introduction of legal adoption, the continuing emigration of unmarried mothers, and most importantly, the: lack of interest in, or, in some cases, the positive antagonism to the scheme on the part of many health authorities and/or their officials. In Counties Louth and Sligo for example the boarding out scheme is almost non-existent while in some other areas it is barely tolerated. Boarding-out is the Cinderella of the local authority services and there is little informed opinion on the subject at a local level. The emphasis now is on legal adoption which was welcomed by the local authorities for the wrong reasons, viz. as a means of avoiding financial and supervisory responsibility for illegitimate children, and health authority officials have been known to put pressure on unmarried mothers to allow their children to be placed for adoption, even to the extent of refusing any alternative help.150

Murray argues that the advantages of boarded-out over other means of dealing with deprived children were well known and that the: deficiencies in the boarding-out scheme as it operates in Ireland may be traced to a general lack of interest which manifests itself in the absence of a uniform system of supervision, the appointment of unsuitable officers, and as mentioned above, an unsympathetic attitude on the part of many health authorities. Failures involving the removal of the children are surprisingly rare in view of the haphazard administration, and in my area occur chiefly in Counties Dublin and Sligo...Boarding breaks down occasionally in Dublin due to (a) the background and heredity of some of the children which renders them more difficult to control than rural children, (b) careless and haphazard selection of foster homes and foster parents, and (c) the absence of preventative and remedial measures at a sufficiently early stage. Failures in Sligo are due, inter alia, to (a) the late age at which children are placed in foster homes (usually from Nazareth House, Sligo,) which militates against their settling down in normal surroundings, and (b) the complete lack of expertise in the selection of foster homes and foster parents.

However, despite outlining these deficiencies and recognising that health authorities did not collect statistics on the after-care of boarded-out children, Murray nonetheless noted: While the occasional failure in boarding-out is well publicised – usually by interested parties – the outstanding success of the scheme as a whole is rarely alluded to. Former boarded-out children are represented in all walks of life. They are to be found in farming and business, as members of Religious Orders of Brothers, among nuns, teachers, civil servants, and nurses, in the army and naval service, in the hotel trade and in all skilled occupations. At the moment a number of boarded-out children are attending Irish Universities, and at least four are studying for the priesthood. Foster parents have reason to be proud of the work they have accomplished down the years, frequently without significant assistance from the local authority.

Miss Clandillon was equally positive abut the after-care employment of boarded-out children in her area, highlighting that ‘among the girls at least ten became nuns, one of whom is now on the missions in Zambia and three are teaching in England.’ Like Miss Murray, Clandillon was positive about the use of boarding-out and suggested that breakdowns in placement were comparatively rare. She observed: the vast majority are illegitimate children who are born in mother-and-baby Homes and who are boarded-out at an early age with a view to being reared as members of the fostering family and of residing permanently with the foster parents. Removals are comparatively rare, the chief reasons being the death of a foster mother in the case of a young child.

However, she did note: the need for close liaison between Children’s Officers and the mother-and-baby homes....the mother’s background must be studied and also that of the putative father, although the latter is often difficult because of the inaccuracy or lack of information available. Time must be allowed to ‘match’ a child to a family – placing any child in any home is worse than useless and may lead to very poor results in which the child is always the sufferer.

Commenting on the issue of standards in foster homes, Murray claimed that: It is true that of recent years foster homes of an acceptable standard are in somewhat short supply but they are not as scarce as we are led to believe. The bias at local level against boarding-out may result in a prospective home being turned down for frivolous reasons, or a prospective foster parent being disqualified for not measuring up to the bizarre or unrealistic standard set by some local official.

Miss Clandillon argued that one of reasons for the difficulties observed in recruiting foster parents was: The maintenance allowances paid to foster parents by health authorities vary enormously throughout the country. At present the highest rates are paid by Donegal: £104 per year, and lowest by Roscommon: £36 per year for the older children...A review of the reasons for the very great variations between health authority rates should be undertaken, the old argument usually given in defence of low rates was that the health authority did not wish to attract the wrong type of foster parent. This danger could be overcome only if each health authority has trained social workers who can evaluate the attitudes of prospective foster parents and their reasons for wanting to rear a child. It is time that foster parents were considered more as members of a team working for the deprived child in a semi-professional capacity and that the allowance reflected this recognition of their very responsible role. The great gap between the £214 per annum paid for children removed to schools and present rates paid to foster parents should be closed.

In relation to the increase in the number of children in approved schools and institutions, Murray argued that local authorities favoured this method of dealing with deprived children because: the children are not subject to inspection either at local or Departmental level, no reports on their progress are called for, and no records or case histories have to be compiled in relation to them; frequently not even a register is kept despite continuous pressure by inspectors. Once admitted to a school, therefore, the Health Authority has no further trouble with a child apart from an occasional letter from the Department inquiring why he has not been boarded-out. The easy answer to this is that a suitable foster home is not available and there the matter rests.

Murray elaborated on this issue noting: Article 4 of the Boarding-Out of Children Regulations, 1954 lays down that a health authority shall not send a child to a school approved by the Minister unless such children cannot be suitably or adequately assisted in being boarded out. Health authorities were reminded of this in paragraph 2 of circular 5/64 and again in paragraph 5 of circular 23/70. It is, nonetheless, admitted that there are many children that health authorities cannot place in foster homes or for adoption, e.g. lack of parent’s consent, or some physical or mental deficiency. As you know, in spite of constant reminders to health authorities and representations by this Department’s Inspectors in respect of individual children, the number of children maintained by health authorities in institutions continues to grow. In 1968 and 1969 they were 648 and 715 respectively. Careful examination of the records for 1967 showed that the vast majority of these cases were children of broken homes or of parents suffering from mental or physical disabilities who refused consent to boarding out. Apart from the Industrial Schools (to which children are committed for minor offences as well as because they are in need of care and maintenance and of the use of which for Health Act children, the Department’s Inspectors have never been in favour) there are only nine institutions approved by the Minister for Health for the purposes of section 55. Three of these are for Protestant children only; one for children under two years; two for boys and three for girls. One of these, the Convent of Mercy, Kells, has only 6 Health Act children, placed there by counties Meath and Westmeath; the Grange Convent until this year accepted girls over 11 years and has room for 25. This year they have added a new building designed to accommodate only 12 children from infancy which will be run on group home lines.

For Clandillon, one of the reasons for the increase in the number of children admitted to industrial schools and other institutions was the: result of a poor staffing situation in particular counties. Usually where the County Medical Officer and a number of Public Health Nurses are charged with the care of deprived children and office staff are also involved in the maintenance of registers and casepapers there is little or no liaison with the mother-and-baby homes. Moreover, where a number of different people are involved in this work as a part of their main duties in another field, the results are usually poor and the service deteriorates because of the fragmentation of the staffing situation – what is everyone’s business becomes nobody’s business, e.g. Laois, Offaly and recently Kildare and Carlow.151