10,992 entries for Inspections - State

The matter was discussed with the delegation and the note of the meeting records: it was agreed that a committee of about seven would be ideal. The Minister thought the proposed committee should, before commencing investigation, be as conversant as possible with similar problems in other countries. He also thought its inquiries might be extended to other associate fields, such as Magdalen Homes and that it should consider establishing liaison with other interested Departments, Health, Social Welfare, Justice and Labour. The Runai Cunta (D. O’Laoghaire) stated that the full co-operation of the schools could be counted on in any such investigation. The deputation assured the Minister that, if requested, one or two of their members would be willing to serve on the proposed Committee. Finally the Minister said he planned to get the Committee formed in the near future with a view to commencing its inquiries in the Autumn. Terms of reference would be prepared, followed by a thorough briefing of the Committee and he would hope to have their report in six to nine month’s time.

Mr Ó Laoghaire wrote to Mr Ó Raifeartaigh on 23rd May 1967 outlining the outcome of the meeting with the deputation from the Junior Chamber of Commerce and noted that sanction had been obtained from the Department of Finance for payment of a travel and subsistence allowance for members of the committee and that the resident managers had agreed to co-operate with the inquiry. Mr Ó Raifeartaigh replied on 20th June stating that: I think the terms of reference should be broad in scope and suggest the following:- (1)to make a survey of the active reformatory and industrial school system and to report thereon to the Minister, making such recommendations and suggestions as they think might be helpful to him in considering the modification or improvement thereof, and (2)to visit the schools and to furnish a separate report to the Minister on each of them with such comments or recommendations as they deem appropriate. The above suggested terms of reference do not include the Place of Detention, Glasnevin as it has already been decided to replace that institution and to frame fresh legislation which would considerably enlarge its functions and purpose.

The following day, 21st June 1967, Fr Kenneth McCabe wrote to Mr O’Malley from St Anthony’s Presbytery in Middlesex, stating: For many years I have been interested in the prevention and treatment of delinquents in Ireland. One aspect that interests me particularly just now is the ‘fate’ of so many reformatory and industrial school boys who fund their ways to Britain, and, almost inevitably, to trouble. I am just recently ordained but I can see possibilities and would like to begin as soon as possible to get something done for these boys. If anything is to be done, however, some change in policy at home would be essential. This would mainly entail an effort to keep track of where boys go in the months or year after they leave the schools, and, if they do come to Britain, to let us know. All this sounds elementary. From what I know of our present reformatory system, it would demand a radical reform of the whole approach to after-care. However, I won’t bore you with ideas. What I have in mind could only be adequately discussed in an interview. Should you be interested in doing something about the problem, I should be very glad to meet you when I am home in Dublin in early August. Do please let me know and I can put a tentative programme on paper. Just for the moment I would be grateful if you would please keep this letter confidential. I would ask in particular that you do no communicate it to the industrial school section of your department. If and when we meet I will let you know why I prefer to keep my suggestions separate from department level.162

On 24th June, Mr Ó Laoghaire wrote to the Assistant Secretary, Mr Mac Gearailt, outlining the terms for the proposed committee. He stated: (a)The terms of reference should be as precise as possible as follows: To survey the Industrial and Reformatory School System and to make a report and recommendations to the Minister (b)care must be taken to represent the opinion of the Secretary of the Managers Committee The report should be confidential and confined to yourself and to members of the Managers Committee – letter of 1/4/67. The members of the Committee should be instructed beforehand to be as discreet as possible and the question of what to do with the report should be left until the report is completed. (c)Regarding the composition of the Committee, there are two proposed from the Junior Chamber of Commerce together with Declan Costello. I think two more from the country districts should be sufficient.

Mr Ó Laoghaire further communicated with Mr MacGearailt on 30th June, stating: As a result of our discussions with the Minister on 30/6/67, it was agreed 1.that the Managers would be approached and requested not to insist on the confidential clause 2.that the terms of reference would be at ‘A’ above 3.that the following would be members of the Committee: John Hurley, Chairman, Declan Lennon, Margaret McGivern, Sr. Kevin. A person to be nominated by Declan Costello T.D. I think it would be best if the Secretary spoke to Br. O’Raghallaigh about 1. and to Declan Costello about 3. We thought that a woman would result from 3 but on second thoughts maybe a man would suit better i.e. 3 men & 2 women instead of 2 men & 3 women.

On 6th July 1967, Mr Ó Raifeartaigh wrote to Mr Declan Costello TD. In the letter he stated: Further to our recent telephone conversation, please excuse my delay in letting you have the names of four people the Minister has in mind for the Committee on Industrial and Reformatory Schools which he proposes to set up. They are: -Mr. John Hurley, Chairman, Mr. Declan Lennon, Miss Margaret McGivern, Sr. Kevin. Mr. Hurley is Chairman of the Allied Cinemas group. Mr. Lennon was last year’s Chairman of Dublin Junior Chamber of Commerce. (He is also in the insurance business). Miss McGivern is also a member of Dublin Junior Chamber of Commerce. Sister Kevin is an expert in Social Science. I should explain that the Dublin Junior Chamber of Commerce has had for some time been especially interesting itself in the Artane Industrial School for Boys. The terms of reference of the Committee would be on the lines of: ‘To survey the Industrial and Reformatory School system and to make a report and recommendations to the Minister’. The Minister would be happy to have from you a suggestion for a fifth member.

Mr Costello replied on 12th July and suggested the Rev Kenneth McCabe as a member. He outlined that: I have known Father McCabe for a number of years. He was educated in Dublin and joined the Jesuit order here and was a member of that order until last year. He was most anxious to do social work (particularly in the field of juvenile delinquency) and with the permission of his authorities he left the order and went to a diocese in England. He was ordained a priest here in Dublin in the month of June but is now as indicated by his address working in an English diocese. I understand that he anticipates that he will be able to get permission from his Bishop to act on the Minister’s committee if it is thought fit to appoint him to it and that he will be able to travel to Dublin for the meetings of the Committee. Fr. McCabe has been intimately acquainted with problems of juvenile delinquency and also industrial schools for many years. I know that in addition to great personal interest in the problem, he now has a very wide knowledge of them. He has spent some time in the Daingean Reformatory and also, during his holidays, has studied the problem in Northern Ireland. He is a young man (in his early thirties) and is very intelligent and would make, I believe, a good committee member. He is a discreet person, but he has decided and firmly held views on how improvements in the present situation could be brought about and he would not, I believe, be in any way inhibited in expressing his views to the committee.

On 4th August 1967, the Department of Education submitted a memo to Government proposing to establish a Committee to inquire into Reformatory and Industrial Schools. The terms of reference for the Committee were to ‘to survey the Reformatory and Industrial Schools systems and to make a report and recommendations to the Minister for Education’ and the rationale was that: Representations have been made from time to time by various groups....that the conditions in reformatory and industrial schools are in urgent need of improvement. References have been made to this matter in the public press on many occasions. With a view to subjecting the problem to outside objective appraisal the Minister for Education proposes to appoint a committee to report and make recommendations to him in relation to it.163

The initial proposed membership of the committee were: Chairman, Mr. John Hurley, Cinema manager – has wide social interests Mr Declan Lennon and Miss Margaret McGivern – members of the Dublin Junior Chamber of Commerce which has interested itself in seeking improvements in the facilities and amenities provided in Artane Industrial School. The Rev. Kenneth McCabe, S.J. Middlesex, England. He has done a great deal of work in the field of juvenile delinquency and neglected children. Specially recommended by Mr. Declan Costello, T.D., who for many years has interested himself in the problems of children suffering from physical or mental handicap. An tSuir Caoimhin O’Caoimh – Little Sisters of the Assumption, Corbally, Limerick. Prominent social worker attached to Limerick Social Service Centre. Br. Francis O’Reilly, Resident Manager Artane. Sec. Association of Resident Managers of Reformatory and Industrial Schools. Dr. John Ryan, Medical Director, St. John of God’s Services for the Mentally Handicapped.’164

This proposal was submitted to Cabinet and was approved on 5th October 1967 subject to a number of changes on the proposed membership of the committee. These changes were: (1)The deletion of Rev K. McCabe; (2)John Hurley to be an ordinary member – not chairman; (3)DJ Miss Eileen Kennedy165 to be chairman; and (4)the addition to the membership of the committee of a nominee each from the Ministers for Education, Justice and Health.166

On 12th September 1967, Mr Barry Early,167 a member of Dublin City Council, was also appointed to the Committee and two days later, on 14th September 1967, the Department of Justice wrote to the Department of Education informing them that ‘the Minister’s nominee for membership of the committee is Mr Risteard Mac Conchradha, a higher executive officer, of the prisons division in this Department’. The other Departmental nominees were Dr JG O’Hagan, Senior Medical officer, Department of Health and Mr Antoin Ó Gormain, Psychologist, Department of Education. At the inaugural meeting of the Committee on 20th October 1967, O’Malley stated that his reason for establishing the Committee was that ‘various individuals and groups interested in sociological activities, had from time to time represented that the provision being made in our reformatory and industrial schools is in urgent need of improvement’. He further stated that the Committee ‘should not feel that limits are being placed on their investigations’.168

The publication of the of the Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Reformatory and Industrial Schools’ Systems on 12th November 1970 is generally viewed as a pivotal moment in the history of residential childcare in Ireland. The Report recommended, inter alia, that the childcare system should be geared to the prevention of family breakdown and residential care should be considered only when there are no satisfactory alternatives; that the system of institutional care should be replaced by small group homes; the Reformatory at Daingean be replaced by a modern Special School; Marlborough House be closed; childcare staff should be fully trained; children in residential care should be educated to the ultimate of their capacities; after-care should form an integral part of the child-care system; administrative responsibility for childcare should be transferred to the Department of Health, with responsibility for the educational element retained by the Department of Education; there should be a new updated Children’s Act; the age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 12 years; both Reformatory and Industrial Schools should be paid on a budget system rather than the existing capitation system; an independent advisory body with statutory powers should be established and there should be continuous research into childcare.

In addition to these broad recommendations, the Committee made a number of recommendations specific to residential care. These included: When children have to be placed in residential care, those from one family should, where at all possible, be kept together. In order to create a home atmosphere the children should be reared in self-contained units in groups of not more than 7-9 children. In well populated areas these units could be purchased or rented houses in different housing areas. The term ‘Industrial School’ should be replaced by the term ‘Residential Home’. Each home should have house parents who would be responsible for the day-to-day running of the unit as a home. Where this is not feasible every home should have a house mother; continuity of staff in these units is fundamental. There should be no suggestion of a dormitory system in units. Children should sleep in bedrooms with not more than three and, in some cases, only one in a bedroom. Units should house both sexes as in a normal home and children should be of different age groups. All homes catering for children in care should be subject to regular inspection. The approach to deprived children in residential care should be one of over-compensation. The children should enjoy the right to, and be encouraged to have, personal property. This means that they should be given pocket money, and should have some say in the choice of their clothes. Children should be encouraged to join in as many outside recreational activities as possible and to use local facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts, and playing fields. They should be encouraged to mix with friends from outside and allowed to bring them to their homes as well as to accept invitations to visit their friends. Every effort should be made to foster the individuality of the children by allowing them to encounter and cope with circumstances existing outside the home as much as possible. When new buildings are being planned, units should be separate from one another. Where old buildings have to be adapted this adaptation should take the form of modern self-contained units with their own bedrooms, bathroom, lavatories, kitchen, living room, dining-room and entrances. Where it is necessary to alter existing buildings not more than 3-4 units should be in the one building. Grants should be made available for building purposes as in the case of schools and hospitals. Before a child is admitted to residential care he should be assessed to ascertain where he can be suitably placed with most benefit to himself. For this purpose every region should have one centre designated as a reception and assessment centre. This centre should also be a Residential Home. This reception and assessment centre would receive all new cases and be responsible for collecting the background information required for the assessment of the child and his subsequent placement. Before a child is placed into residential care from a reception and assessment centre certain records concerning him should be obtained. These should include birth, baptismal and confirmation certificates, a social background report, a schools report, other personal records. These reports should accompany the child when placed. • A comprehensive record should be kept of every child in residential care including medical case history, school progress reports, psychological tests and any other relevant reports.’169

The apparent significance of the Report can be gauged by the observations of one commentator with a long involvement in the provision of residential care, who argued: the impetus for change and improvement came with the Kennedy Report of 1970. A number of the larger, single sex, isolated institutions were closed down altogether. All the others began to develop small units within their buildings and/or group homes in the community. Alongside with this, training at a basic qualifying level was initiated, starting in 1971 with one training centre, eventually rising to six separate centres...170

More generally, he argued that the report: brought about a remarkable shift in emphasis – from reformatory/punitive to caring; from large institution to small familial group homes; from controlling/corrective to understanding/caring; from custodial to educative; from basic vocational training to all-round education; from untrained, with no opportunity for training, to professionally trained and recognised care workers. It also pointed out that the deprived child needed an investment over and above that required for a child safely and securely growing up in its own family. It also set in train the up-dating of all laws relating to children and child care... 171