4,228 entries for Historical Context

They further recommended that: In order that there be no undue delay, it should be possible for the group to consider more than one of the areas simultaneously and to make interim reports’. In addition, ‘It is essential that adequate, full-time secretarial services be available to the group....and recommendations by the group should be accompanied by (a) draft heads of legislation where appropriate (b) estimates of cost where possible.221

In addition to the review of the recommendations of the Kennedy Report by the Government Departments with varying levels of responsibility for residential childcare, the Association of Workers for Children in Care (AWCC) and CARE, also conducted their own review of the degree to which the recommendations had been implemented. The AWCC made the following commentary based on a survey of 1,215 children in 25 Residential Homes: It is clear that family breakdown accounts for an increasing number of children coming into care. These children, in the main, are coming from disturbed family backgrounds and have to suffer the further traumatic experience of separation from their families, however inadequate. They are children with problems. They are in need of therapy and treatment in a relaxed, accepting situation. They need help exploring their own feelings towards themselves, their peers and their own family. The Kennedy Committee did not pay sufficient attention to the increasing incidence of disturbed children in residential care, and the implications of this for future planning. ....The group home model envisaged by Kennedy is suited to the long stay care of more or less normal children, and does not provide for the majority now in need of care, the children with problems.222

They also argued that: ..some form of closed facility for boys who cannot or will not avail of the programmes offered in St. Laurences’s or Ard Mhuire is necessary. If children persistently abscond from both centres, they are eventually left at large in the community, often living rough and deteriorating both physically and socially. Young offenders have a very good understanding of the loopholes in the present legal system, and realise that if they are persistent enough they can escape the law.223

However, the core concern for the AWCC was that: there is as yet no salary scale or career structure available for child care workers. Despite protracted negotiations between the AWCC and the Department of Education, the Department has not yet accepted the principle that such a scale and structure should be established on a national basis. The present position is that the salaries of the 26 Residential Homes must be paid by the managers of these homes from the capitation grant provided by the Department. But increases in this grant have barely kept pace with the increase in the cost of living, and have in no way taken account of the radical restructuring of these homes in recent years, resulting in a considerable intake of staff, mostly lay. The religious orders managing these homes are placed in the invidious position of not being able to provide lay workers with the adequate salary and security which is their due....The provision of training facilities for child care workers, particularly the diploma course at the Kilkenny School of Social Education, has attracted many more lay people into the work and resulted in improved standards of care and greater professionalism. But elementary justice requires that an adequate salary scale be available to these workers, and in the opinion of the AWCC this salary must be paid by the Department concerned. It cannot be provided from a system of capitation designed for an entirely different staffing structure, composed in the main of members of religious orders who rarely received any formal salary whatsoever.224

CARE also set out to review the recommendations of the Kennedy Report ‘individually and in sequence’. However, they argued that such an approach: ...was a mistake. A mistake in which the authorities responsible for implementing the Kennedy recommendations were implicated too. In general we would agree with the recommendations of the report, but if they were interpreted exactly and implemented as they stand, we would have created new problems in order to solve existing ones. In the report the overall subject indicated in the committee’s terms of reference is dealt with under various chapter headings, but this division, and the sequence, of the various aspects of the subject are not very systematic or logical. The report lacks coherence, it lacks perspective which would facilitate planning. The need for the overall planning of children’s services is recognised in the report, but the various disparate recommendations do not fit into an overall planning framework. For this reason Government agreement with the various recommendations is insufficient if the Government does not see them as part of a coherent purposeful approach to the problems of deprived children; in short, the Government must be concerned with planning for deprived children.225

On 17th June 1974, Mr John Bruton, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, wrote to the Minister for Education, Mr Richard Burke, outlining the state of play. In his letter he stated: while the Working party was originally intended to review progress and indicate gaps in the implementation of the Kennedy Report it has in its introductory statement gone farther and recommended the setting up of another working group. As I read the suggested terms of reference of this new working party it seems as if it would in effect be undertaking the production of another (albeit updated) Kennedy Report. This major undertaking is not demonstrably necessary. The major lines of policy are in fact accepted by all and their main problems are availability of resources, administrative procedures and enabling legislation. I feel that the proposed investigation is too broad and would stifle much needed action pending issue of its findings. It is also unwise in that it involves the handing over to a committee of issues which require more and not less political direction. I suggest that following alternative course of action. In order to provide a firm starting point for action, a decision should be taken now that the administrative responsibilities of each Department will remain as they are at present. To co-ordinate day-to-day implementation of policy an inter-departmental committee (similar to that in operation in relation to handicapped children)...To draw up legislation and consider such wider policy issues as may arise in the context of legislation another higher level; interdepartmental committee should be set up. As the primary task of this committee would be drawing up of substantive legislative proposals it would need to act under continuing political direction. Such continuing political direction would only be feasible if it consisted of public servants.

On the basis of the proposals outlined in the letter, the Department of Education prepared a draft memorandum for Government. In this the Minister for Education outlined his position in respect of the proposal put forward by the Working Party, arguing ‘the modus operandi proposed by the Working party would appear as a recommendation for another (updated) Kennedy Report and would constitute a dilatory and abstract approach to the problem’. It reiterated the recommendation from the Kennedy Report in relation to administrative responsibility for childcare services, also noting that The Care Memorandum recommended ‘having one Minister and one Department have the “main responsibility” for deprived children and children’s services’. The memo went on to state that the CARE Memorandum ‘does not, however, attempt to define what should be the limits of this responsibility of the principal Minister (i.e. the Minister for Health) in relation to the services which would remain with the Ministers for Education and Justice. Moreover, it would seem to take no account of the very important principle that political accountability and administrative responsibility should rest with the same person.’226

The view of the Department of Education was that: the laudable purpose which the Kennedy Committee had in mind would be more appropriately achieved by establishing an efficient and politically directed system of co-ordination between the various Departments under which each would continue to play its existing specialist role as embodied in the concepts ‘Care’, ‘Education’ and ‘Justice’. To obtain the full benefits of specialisation, it is possible that services at present administered in one of the Departments for historical reasons might be more properly located in another. In the long-term, a re-arrangement of responsibility for services concerned preponderantly either with ‘education’ or ‘care’ may be necessary as between the Departments of Education and Health. This, for example, might involve the transfer of responsibility for residential homes (the former industrial schools) to the Department of Health. In the short term, however, the Minister for Education considers the present would not be an appropriate time for such a transfer. Many of the services concerned with deprived children are at present in the course of rapid development and the Minister fears that the task of undertaking a transfer of functions at this juncture, with all that this implies in the way of staff re-organisation and re-familiarisation, might retard rather than accelerate the immediate improvement and expansion of services.

To achieve these objectives, the Minister argued that ‘the first task in order of priority, an inter-departmental committee be established to update all legislation relating to child-care and consider such wider policy issues as may arise in the context of such legislation’. He secondly, proposed the establishment of ‘a permanent committee (the ‘operations committee’) to be set up to co-ordinate day-to-day implementation of policy. The Committee would be representative of the Departments of Health, Education and Justice and would, in the first place, be a formalisation of close contacts at present being developed between the three Departments.’ He finally proposed that: an independent advisory body at national level be set up as recommended in the Kennedy Report except that, at least pending the completion of the work of the legislation committee, the question of its having statutory powers should be postponed. The function of this committee for the time being would be to advise on specific matters referred to them by the legislation or operations committees or by the Government itself.

The draft memo was circulated to various Departments who responded to the proposals outlined. The Attorney General noted that the memo proposed to reject the recommendation of the Kennedy Report, but that he believed ‘that the balance of the argument favours the Kennedy proposals’. The Minister for Public Service: considered that a decision in principle should now be taken to allocate main responsibility in relation to child care to a single Department; the balance of logic and opinion suggests that the Department chosen should be the Department of Health. The first advantage of such a decision would be to indicate that the Government is committed to an approach based on ‘care’ rather than law enforcement in relation to children at risk and would direct the attention of the proposed inter-Departmental legislation Committee to the need for such an approach in dealing with the reform of legislation relating to children. Secondly, it would place responsibility for co-ordination on an area of Government under a single Minister rather than on a Committee answerable to no single authority: the establishment of a permanent committee to co-ordinate day to day implementation of policy, would, in the Minister’s view, tend to blur lines of responsibility.

In addition, ‘because of the considerable organisation implications involved, a representative from the Department of Public Service should be included on this inter-departmental Committee’.

The Minister for Health argued that the ‘Government’s objective should be to institute, as quickly as possible, a unified comprehensive children’s service, with administrative structures which reflect the needs of the children concerned. A new Children’s Act is required to provide a modern legal framework for the reformed services’. To achieve this, the Minister stated: that the inter-departmental committee approach, even with the inclusion of outside experts, does not offer the best hope of a speedy review of law and policy in relation to children. Such a committee, because of the other commitments of those concerned, tend to be both slow and cumbersome....the Minister for Health believes that reform proposals can best be instituted by setting up a full-time task force, comprising representatives of the Departments concerned and selected outside experts. In all, he would not envisage more than ten task force members. This group would work directly to the Tanaiste and Minister for Health, and its function would be to prepare a new Children’s Bill and other reform proposals which he would bring to the Cabinet for decision. The task force would remain in existence until such time as the necessary reform proposals are laid before the Cabinet by the Tanaiste. It is envisaged that this should not take longer than 3-4 months, if the group is set up on a full-time basis....The Minister believes that unnecessary delay and confusion in planning will only be avoided if one Minister plays a lead role and he feels that he, as Minister for Health, with responsibility for a wide range of children’s services, should assume this role in planning the necessary reforms.

The Department of Justice foresaw problems with vesting responsibility for children’s services in one Department arguing that such a proposal ignored: the fundamental point that problems of young persons who come in conflict with the law or who are otherwise at risk cannot reasonably be divorced from problems of family stress; and that amongst factors that are relevant to family stress, such matters as housing and social welfare benefits are likely to be of major importance, so the argument for a ‘single department’ for children should logically lead to the conclusion that the Department should also deal with housing, social welfare benefits, not to mention family law, schools and other matters.

In addition, in relation to matters of legislation, it is the experience of the Department of Justice, repeated time and again, that attempts to produce ‘comprehensive’ legislation on what are very complex issues invariably not only prove more difficult (and time consuming) than originally estimated because of the number of unforeseen difficulties which the detailed examination throws up but also run up against the additional and important difficulty that a hold-up on one point means that everything is held up; and, in a matter as complex in its implications as this, there are bound to be very controversial points which will not prove possible to deal with quickly.

However, the Minister was in favour of the establishment of the ‘Operations Committee’, but opposed to the establishment of an advisory committee on the grounds that: it would bring no practical benefit but on the other hand would mean the generation of a constant stream of proposals beyond the capacity of the Government to pay for (and beyond the capacity of available resources to ‘process’ into workable schemes or acceptable legislation even if they were basically acceptable in principle) and that the practical result would be the existence of a Government-sponsored body which was serving only to generate public criticism.