4,228 entries for Historical Context

At the seventh meeting of the team held on 16th November 1977, Mr Ó Gilín reported on his trip to the secure unit at Redbanks in Lancashire and informed the team that the authorities there considered 30 children the ideal number for a secure unit. The team also discussed an item which had appeared in the Sunday Independent reported a ‘bitter row behind the scenes’ in relation to the deliberations of the team. Mr Ó Maitiú stated, ‘that such a report was inaccurate, must be treated as conjecture but it did emphasise the need for care in discussing the affairs of the Team’. At the next meeting on 30th November 1977: Reference was made to various letters and press reports concerning the Committee’s activities. The letters seem to cast doubt on the qualification of the members, and a letter was sent to the Daily Independent pointing out what their qualifications were but this had not been published. In reference to the letter from Mrs. M. Harding P.R.O, Irish Association of Social Workers, Sister Lucey said that its contents could not be regarded as I.A.S.W. policy because I.A.S.W. policy had not yet been defined.

The meeting also noted that the Department of Justice were in the process of recruiting 320 additional prison officers and that the staff of Loughan House would be drawn primarily from this group. Mr Ó Maitiú reported, that on the instruction of the Minister for Education, sanction had been sought from the Department of Finance to fund the construction of a unit for 40 boys. At the ninth meeting of the team on 10th January 1978 the members were informed that Loughan House had ceased operating for 16-21-year-olds and that staff training for the new function commenced. At the next meeting on 13th February 1978: The question of adverse publicity about the Loughan House Project was then discussed and it was agreed that various organisations who had indulged in criticism (CARE, IASW etc.) had been given a great deal of information about the project and that there was no excuse for the inaccuracies in their statements.

The remaining meetings were then largely concerned with outlining the detailed requirements for the new secure unit to be built adjacent to Scoil Ard Mhuire and discussing whether the unit could cater for both boys and girls. At a meeting of a sub-committee of the team to discuss accommodation for girls on 24th April 1978, it was agreed that: (1)at present it would be well not to press ahead with a two-sex secure school but that options should be left open for the future; (2)what was required was a secure unit for 15 girls and an assessment unit for eight with provision for assessment on a daily basis as well as on a residential basis. The school could be planned in such a way that a further secure unit for 10 could be added if necessary; (3)it would be as well not to use the site at Lusk for the girls school as it might turn the area into a delinquent ghetto; (4)the school should be as near as possible to the city. To this end it was decided to explore the possibilities of obtaining land at St Loman’s, Blanchardstown Hospital, or St John of God’s Stillorgan. Mr O Mordha undertook to have the Dublin Corporation contacted to see if they might have 5-10 acres of land available. It was also agreed that the Conference of Major Religious Superiors should be written to on the matter.

Despite substantial criticisms from a range of childcare organisations, pending the opening of a purpose-built unit in Oberstown, it was agreed that Loughan House, in Blacklion, County Cavan, would be certified as a Reformatory School for 12- to 16-year-old males and be managed by the Department of Justice and staffed by prison officers. Critics included the Prisoners Rights Organisation, who conducted a survey of 50 12–16-year-olds in the North Inner City which concluded that: 92 percent have or have had a brother or father in prison and 94 per cent believe that they themselves will end up in prison. The threat of prison is always present for these youngsters. Yet it does not deter them. When the morale of a community is broken and it has become unstable through lack of financial opportunities and social security the internal sanctions in the community which are largely manifested through parental control cease to operate. External sanctions, largely manifested in the criminal justice system, will not substitute. When people live in such disadvantaged circumstances the deterrent effect of prison exists only in the mind of the penologist. Loughan House can have no deterrent effect for these youngsters.277

Others such as Fr Fergal O’Connor who operated a hostel for homeless girls in the North Inner City of Dublin were reported as arguing ‘if Loughan House was considered part of an overall system for children in trouble, and if boys were only sent there for a short time and on the advice of people who worked with them, it would be a useful institution’.278 However, the majority of child welfare organisations issued a statement outlining their opposition to the proposal to open Loughan House and for the Government ‘to review their plans and adopt a more enlightened approach to the treatment of young offenders’.279 Loughan House opened in October 1978 and the first pupil admitted on 27th October 1978, a 14-year-old from Dublin,280 and closed in March 1983 when Trinity House opened.281

In early 1978 the issue of administrative responsibility for childcare services was raised in the Department of Education. Mr Ó Gilín, on 9th February, in a detailed memo to Mr Ó Maitiú, noted the Task Force on Child Care Services had effectively stopped meeting in January 1977. The Minister for Health, Mr Haughey TD, decided to ask it to complete its work and appointed Judge Sean Butler of the High Court as Chairman in December 1977, replacing Mr Flor O’Mahony who had stepped down in April 1977. Mr Ó Gilín noted that: The task force has therefore now resumed work and, as a first objective, has set itself to produce a draft report on the question of administrative responsibility. It is considered that, at the present juncture, this will be a matter on which a decision can be made fairly quickly. As, in addition, it is one of the main issues on which the Task Force has to report, a decision on this matter is of major importance. For this reason, it is sought in this memorandum to confirm if earlier Departmental policy is unchanged in this regard. In particular, it is desired to establish the relevance to this matter of proposal no. 5 in the section of the Fianna Fail manifesto on ‘youth and youth employment’. The proposal is to the effect that a ‘Children’s Service Authority’ be established ‘with responsibility for deprived children or those at risk by the provision of the necessary medical and education services.

Mr Ó Gilín outlined that in relation to administrative responsibility for childcare services: The modus operandi adopted under the new chairman is to assign topics, which will form sections of the final report, to individual members to prepare memoranda on drafts. In accordance with this arrangement, a memorandum on administrative responsibility has been submitted by one of the non-civil servant members and is at present under discussion. The memorandum assumes that responsibility for child care services will in general be assigned, under the Department of Health, to the health boards and the memorandum is mainly concerned with how this assignment should be discharged within the health board structure.

The memo prepared on administrative reform proposed four alternatives: (1)existing directors of Community Care, advised by child care advisors attached to the programme manager’s office; or (2)two kinds of director of community care, one having responsibility for health services, the other for social services and the latter being assigned the child care responsibility as part of his remit; or (3)three kinds of director of community care, having responsibilities respectively for health services, social services and child care services; or (4)a (fourth) programme manager, for child care exclusively. There is a simple logic to this, namely, beginning in (1) with minimal interference with the present structures and moving, via (2) and (3), to a major addition, in (4), to the existing structures. In fact, logically, there is another possibility between (3) and (4), that of a programme manager for social services including child care and something on these lines has now been suggested in an amendment by two members.

However, Mr Ó Gilín reported that: The Department of Health representative on the Task Force has opposed specific administrative structures for child care on the grounds that such would run counter to the direction of the present development of our health services....If, alone of all social services, child care were to have a separate administration, there would quickly come similar demands from other areas (e.g. community services for the old, the mentally-handicapped etc.). This would flatly contradict the integrated structure of health boards as set up under the 1970 Health Act. The advocates on the Task Force of some kind of specific child care administration fully realise the weight of the foregoing objection to their position. However, they argue as follows. Firstly and basically, they believe a separate structure is the only way of ensuring that child care will receive the attention it needs. Even the old and mentally-handicapped have votes and they are represented by powerful lobbies of friends and of parents. Deprived children, with generally inadequate parents and no friends, are the most defenceless group in the community. Secondly, it is claimed that community care, in the health board context, has, historically meant health care in the first instance and that the personal social service component is the junior, and fairly youthful, partner.

Mr Ó Gilín then asked what effect the proposal in the Fianna Fail manifesto would have on the deliberations of the Task Force, noting that ‘if the advocates of a specific child care authority in the Task Force were aware of the manifesto proposal, they would make good use of it, to the chagrin of the Department of Health’. In relation to residential childcare, he highlighted two substantial changes in the nature of such provision since the publication of the Kennedy Report in 1970: The first of these (already underway at the time of the report but now virtually complete) arises out of the change from the traditional industrial school (where the school was on the premises) to the present residential home, where the children go outside to schools in the local community. Applying the Kennedy Report recommendations to this situation, the Department of Health (or the health boards) should take over the homes completely, as they are now child care, and not educational (except in a very general sense) institutions. The residual education function should be discharged through advising the Inspectors (as it is now about to be done) on paying particular attention to the educational needs of children from the homes where they are found on the rolls of local national schools. The second development has been that, while at the time of the Kennedy Report the great majority of the children were committed through the courts (and were thus this Department’s responsibility under existing legislation), the position now is that the majority of the present population of the homes is placed there, and paid for by the health boards. In a few short years, this will be the case with almost all the residential home population. The two factors above are, together, almost unanswerable grounds for transferring administrative responsibility for the homes to the Department of Health. This has been our policy and it is presumed no change is contemplated.

However, he went on to argue that ‘the position of the special schools is different’. The proposal from the Kennedy Report that the Department of Education provide the educational input to the schools and the Department of Health manage the residential element in Mr Ó Gilín’s view ‘would be detrimental to the achievement of the school’s objectives and thus of the welfare of the children’. However, he noted that he thought that proposals would be put forward to transfer the Special Schools to the Department of Health, the grounds being that: if there is to be a children’s authority in any form, then this authority should have control over the full range of facilities (which would include special schools) for deprived children. Thus a child may, for a time need family support (home help) or social worker supervision. At a later time he may need placement in residential care (residential home or special school), following which there may be a further period of after-care under supervision. This kind of continuity of care, it will be argued, can only be effectively achieved if the care authority itself is responsible for the full range of services.

The alternative view, according to Mr Ó Gilín was that: special schools are principally schools, albeit of a particular kind. It is not simply the case the education happens (for convenience, as it were, or for other fortuitous reasons) to take place on the premises. Rather is the educational programme part of the essential basic purpose of the institution. There is a danger here that some people may see a degree of antipathy between education and care here. These children (young offenders) are generally educational failures to date and some see an education-oriented programme as an effort to administer further doses of medicine which has proved ineffective hitherto. Thus they would wish to make care basic, with education a secondary function. However, the mere existence of schools of this sort has been brought into question elsewhere, notably in Britain (though also on the Continent and in the U.S.A.). Research has shown that the schools are not effective in ‘curing’ delinquency and that they often succeed in further labelling children to the detriment of both children and society. If such schools are to be justified at all, it is only by taking the view that (1) there are certain children whose actions lead to society to refuse further tolerance to their being left in the community, (2) these children are either a danger to themselves or to others or have not got an effective family to control them, (3) the special schools can provide them with a degree of (a) care and (b) education, through specially designed programmes, which they would otherwise not get and which, while not in all cases succeeding in ‘curing’ their delinquency entirely, can effect major improvements in their educational levels and personality structure and thus future social behaviour, this conception of the role of the special school has seemed to pint in the direction of its being primarily a residential school with a specialised programme. As such, it should come under the administrative aegis of the Department of Education....It has been the intention therefore to press, at the Task Force, to have the special schools excluded from any proposed unification of services under the Department of Health. A direction is sought if this is to continue to be our policy. It is recommended that, for the reasons set out above, our policy should remain unchanged.

Following this memo, Mr Ó Maitiú drafted a note for the Minister on 15th February 1978. In relation to residential care, he noted: as far as non-delinquent children are concerned, the position is that the vast majority are now being taken into care via the Health Boards. This Department’s involvement in administering these homes is a complete anachronism. I agree therefore that the policy position already taken up by this Department should be maintained i.e. that administrative responsibility should be transferred to the Department of Health. The question of administrative responsibility for the special schools for young offenders is not so simple.

He was of the view that: the CARE representatives on the Task Force will undoubtedly press very hard to have the service transferred to the Department of Health. That Department may not be all that anxious to take it on – our experience is that none of the health boards or voluntary organisations want to have anything to do with young delinquents. The Department of Justice has never been anxious to take over the service and has only agreed to run Loughan House as a temporary expedient.’

However, he was of the view: that this service should be located in the Department of Education, even though the task is a thankless one and liable to misrepresentation in the media and elsewhere. I consider that this approach is consistent with the Department’s general policy that the Department or one of its agencies should administer all educational services, no matter where they are located. Similar arguments apply to the Youth Encounter Projects which provide the same type of programme as in the special schools with the children continuing to live at home. Furthermore, the Youth Service is actively involved in these projects at local level and at central level participates in the control of the projects and gives financial support. In this area of intermediate treatment there is scope for many more projects and for a multiplicity of approaches. There is no reason therefore why the Department of Health Neighbourhood Youth projects with their strong emphasis on social and community work – should not also proceed. (Incidentally the initiative for this type of project came from this Department, long before the Task Force was ever thought of).