10,992 entries for Inspections - State

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).

1979 was designated International Year of the Child by the United Nations General Assembly and a national steering committee was established in June 1978. The Association of Workers with Children in Care (AWCC) organised a conference in Trinity College Dublin to mark the event. Organised by the AWCC and FICE – the International Federation of Educative Communities and chaired by Br DE Drohan, the conference was entitled ‘The Right to be Brought Up in a Spirit of Peace and Universal Brotherhood’. On 24th June 1978, Br TL Furlong, the National Chair of the AWCC wrote to the Taoiseach, Mr Lynch, inviting him to both open and close the conference. He outlined that 1979 was designated International Year of the Child and stated: The Irish Association of Workers with Children in Care, to mark this historic occasion are organising, in conjunction with the international child care organisation FICE an international conference in Dublin from 2nd July to 6th July 1979. The fact that Dublin has been chosen for this unique conference is a tribute to the high standard of child care in Ireland and is also a great honour.

Mr Haughey, as Minister for Health at that time, wrote to Mr Lynch on 20th October 1979 stating, ‘given the association’s relatively minor status when compared to other organisations in this country, I would like to advise that an Uachtarain and yourself should decline the invitation to the conference’.282 Mr Haughey himself opened the conference in July 1979.

The Final Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services was published on 7th April 1981, having been presented to the Minister for Health the previous September. In the middle of 1980, when all hope of an agreed report disappeared, the then Taoiseach (Mr Haughey) directed the Task Force to submit its final report forthwith without proceeding to prepare a Children Bill as required by their terms of reference.283 In September 1980, the Task Force submitted its Final Report284 which ran to nearly 450 pages, contained a main report, a supplemental report and a number of reservations by members.285 The Task Force acknowledged ‘the tremendous work done for children over the years by voluntary bodies’286 and argued that: the most striking feature of the child care scene in Ireland was the alarming complacency and indifference of both the general public and various government departments and statutory bodies responsible for the welfare of children. This state of affairs illustrated clearly the use by a society of residential establishments to divest itself of responsibility for deprived children and delinquent children.287

In reviewing the administration of childcare services in Ireland, the Report reflected on the division of responsibility between the Departments of Health, Education and Justice and observed that the ‘division did not, in the main, result from any allocation or rationalisation of child care functions but rather evolved haphazardly in the sense that the services tended to come within the general control of the government department which succeeded the original agency in which the particular service originated’.288 The Report acknowledged that this division ‘resulted in an unsatisfactory situation from the point of view of effective planning and co-ordination of resources’289 and that ‘the absence of co-ordinated planning at departmental level in turn is reflected in the manner of delivery of services at a local level’.290

Following a review of earlier recommendations in relation to administrative responsibility for child welfare services, the Task Force concluded: ‘We are satisfied that what is needed as a prerequisite to the most effective planning, development and delivery of services for deprived children is that these services should be unified under one government department as far as possible and that child care services should be integrated with family support services.’ The Report then recommended that the Department of Health should be that Department that would have responsibility for: The implementation of the statutory provisions contained in a Children Act concerned with the welfare and protection of children, including the making of regulations, orders or rules to be provided in that Act; The development of the child care expertise necessary for formulation of policy, based on practical experience, professional knowledge and relevant research and information; The identification of children’s needs and the provision of services, including preventative services, designed to meet these needs in consultation, as necessary and appropriate, with other Government Departments, with child care authorities and other bodies providing services at local level’ The making of organisational arrangements for the delivery at local level of the services for which it is responsible in accordance with statutory provisions and in line with defined policy guidelines; The monitoring and evaluation of the services for which it has responsibility.291

Responsibility for the delivery of childcare services at a local level, the Report recommended, should be provided by an authority to be known as the Child Care Authority (CCA) and functions of the CCA would include establishing the need for services, providing services to meet these needs, preventative work, liaising with other public bodies to ensure that the interests of children and families are adequately reflected in their policies, implementing policy on family welfare services, including childcare services, and drawing together and developing all available resources concerned with the welfare of children in its area to ensure that these resources are maximised. The Task Force recommended that health boards be designated as child care authorities and that the boards perform the functions of the CCA. However, in doing this, the Report recommended that the CCA be a separate legal entity with specific statutory functions and that child care services, alongside family support services be a separate body of services, in particular separate from more general health services.

The authors of the supplementary report to the Task Force, Mr Ó Cinnéide and Ms O’Daly, however, although agreeing with the other members of the Task Force that the Department of Health and the health boards should be given responsibility for the provision of childcare, went on to state that ‘We are not in agreement with our colleagues views that the existing administrative structures are adequate’(emphasis in original).292 At Departmental level, they recommended that the existing childcare division be strengthened by providing the division with additional administrative and professional resources, but otherwise they saw no substantial problem with the existing structure. However, in terms of allocating responsibility to the regional health boards, they argued that ‘the allocation to them of entirely new responsibilities, does in our view present considerable problems’. They went on to claim that: In short we believe that the health boards as they are at present organised could not carry out these responsibilities. We have concluded that the health boards, if they are to become Child Care Authorities, would need to be reorganised to some extent. It is on this basis that we have supported the recommendation that they should become Child Care Authorities.