10,992 entries for Inspections - State

It was not until the early 1990s that responsibility was primarily allocated to the Department of Justice to prepare new juvenile justice legislation. At this stage, debates on formulating juvenile justice legislation on either ‘welfare’ or ‘justice’ principles were to a degree superseded by attempts to devise legislation on ‘restorative’ grounds.336 In December 1996, a Children Bill was published and the second stage was completed in the Dáil in February 1997. However, the Bill fell on the dissolution of the 27th Dáil, but in September 1997 it was restored to the order paper. In excess of 150 amendments to the Bill were put forward and, on this basis, it was agreed that a new Bill be prepared, the Children Bill 1999. This was eventually enacted as the Children Act 2001 as highlighted earlier in the paper.

In August 1982, a memorandum for Government was prepared on the transfer of responsibility for children’s residential homes from the Minister for Education to the Minister for Health. In addition to seeking to transfer the homes, the decision also sought ‘the allocation of the necessary funds to wipe out the accumulated deficits of these homes and to place them on a proper budgetary system’. The justification for the transfer to the Department of Health from the Department of Education was that: (i)the homes should now be regarded as child care establishments rather than educational. This is particularly so at present in the situation where, in all but two of the homes, the children attend outside schools, thereby reducing significantly the involvement of the Department of Education with the homes; (ii)the vast majority of the children in these homes are now the responsibility of the various health boards. The health boards pay for the children in the homes at the approved capitation rate and have the responsibility of providing supportive social work services for the children and their families as well as being responsible for the after-care of the children; (iii)the transfer of ministerial responsibility to the Minister for Health would be consistent with the objective of unifying, as far as possible, responsibility for the child care services under one Minister.

In addition, the memo noted: The report of the Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools System (the Kennedy Report) recommended in 1970 that responsibility for children’s residential homes should be transferred to the Minister for Health. In 1976 the Department of Education formally recorded its agreement with the Kennedy Report recommendations. Since then the Department of Health has in fact taken the lead role in negotiating with the homes on matters of overall policy in the field of residential child care. More recently the Final Report of the Task Force on Child Care Services recommended the formal transfer of responsibility for these homes to the Minister for Health. The Department of Education, Finance and the Public Service have been consulted and they are in favour of such a transfer taking place.

However, before the transfers could take place, the memo highlighted the financial position of the homes and the necessity of solving that issue. At present the homes are financed by way of a weekly capitation payment in respect of each child. The payment is made by the authority responsible for the placement of the child which, as already stated, means the health board in the vast majority of cases, the capitation rate is revised on an annual basis and fixed by order of he Minister for Education after consultation with the Minister for Health and the Minister for Finance. The Managers of the homes claim that in recent years capitation has tended to lag behind real increases in the cost of looking after children and that, as a result, a number of homes have accrued considerable deficits. The Minister for Health made funds available in last year’s Supplementary Estimates to help clear these deficits. Notwithstanding this, and despite an increase since January 1982 from £54 to £68 in the weekly capitation rate, a number of homes have already this year indicated that they are in serious financial difficulty and anticipate considerable deficits by the end of the current year. The Managers of the homes have persistently expressed dissatisfaction with the capitation method of financing the homes and have requested that there should be an immediate transfer to a budget system of financing.

The justification for moving from a capitation system to a budget system was that it would give ‘health boards greater control as regards the overall policies and afford the homes the benefit of the board’s expertise in the management of resources with particular reference to staffing, their major cost factor’. It was estimated by the Department of Health that £1.5 million would be needed to wipe out the accumulated deficits of the residential homes as at 31st December 1982 and to achieve the objectives of clearing the deficits and transferring the homes: The Minister for Health proposes that as a preliminary step to a formal transfer of responsibility for these homes a group of officers of the Departments of Education, Finance and Health should analyse the statements of accounts and estimates submitted by the homes, with a view to arriving at a firm figures for the wiping out of the accumulated deficits of the homes and of transferring from capitation to a budget system of financing. This proposal has the support of the Departments of Finance and Education. He further seeks a commitment from the Government that the necessary funds be made available to him by way of a special allocation to allow him act on the findings of the group. In that connection the Minister would also look critically, in association with the health boards, at the present manner of operation of each residential centre particularly with a view to ensuring that children suitable for fosterage or other community based types of care are not institutionalised. Department of Finance consider that it would be inappropriate for the Government to make any decisions on the future financing of these homes and liquidating their deficits until the proposed inter-departmental committee has completed its examination of the homes financial position. However, the Minister for Health would not be prepared to take over responsibility in a situation where he would be faced with demands for additional funds necessary to put the homes on a sound financial footing and where such funds were not made available to him.

On 25th August 1982 the Government: (1)agreed, in principle, that the functions in relation to children’s residential homes should be transferred from the Minister for Education to the Minister for Health; and (2)decided that an Interdepartmental Committee comprising officials of the Department of Education, Finance, Health and Justice should be established to review the operation and financing of the homes.

In December 1983, following receipt of the report of the interdepartmental committee, a memo was sent to Government formally seeking to transfer children’s homes from the Department of Education to the Department of Health.

The decision to establish an interdepartmental committee and the deliberations that gave rise to it provide a useful example of the difficulty of implementation in the area of child welfare. The Kennedy Committee had recommended that the system of funding residential care move from a capitation system to a budget system and that responsibility for the administration of childcare be given to the Department of Health. However, this would not be finally agreed on and implemented until 1984 and involved the commissioning of a number of further reports, and the establishment of an inter-departmental committee, before formal agreement could be reached. The transfer of functions relating to Industrial Schools from the Minister for Education to the Minister for Health on 1st January 1984337 effectively centralised all statutory responsibilities for children’s homes to the Department of Health. From that date the Department of Health assumed statutory responsibility for 24 Industrial Schools in addition to the 17 approved homes for which it already had responsibility under the Health Act 1953. The only residential facilities for children in care operating outside the aegis of the Minister for Health were the four Special Schools, which were controlled and funded by the Minister for Education. January 1984 also marked a major change in the funding of children’s homes. Homes in the past were financed from a combination of public and private funds. Grants payable jointly by the State and local authorities in respect of the maintenance of children committed to certified Industrial Schools were provided for in the Children Act 1908. Grants took the form of a fixed sum per child per week – a capitation rate, with half the rate paid by the Minister for Education and half by the local authority. A school’s income from these sources was supplemented by fund-raising. As the number of children committed by the courts to the homes declined, the number of children placed by the health boards increased. Health boards paid the full capitation rate for these children and also for children placed by them in Approved Homes. This system of payment ceased from 1st January 1984 and children’s homes from that point were now funded directly on a budget basis by their local health board, following recommendations by a special inter-departmental committee established by the Minister for Health to examine the financing of all children’s homes.

On 23rd October 1974, Mr O Maitiú wrote to Mr Hensey in the Department of Health informing him that the Department of Education was studying the question of the financing of the residential homes and that discussions had taken place with the Association of Workers in Child Care in relation to recommendation 11 of the Kennedy Report. In his letter he stated that ‘because an increasing proportion of the children in the homes are the responsibility of the health authorities and particularly in view of the recent Government decision on the role of the Minister for Health in regard to child care, we think we should not go further with the matter at this stage until we have consulted with your Department’. Ó Maitiú enclosed a detailed memorandum on the issue which reflected the Department’s thinking at that time. The memo highlighted that: One of the points basic to the Kennedy Report recommendations was that children should be placed in, and retained in, residential care only when there was no suitable alternative. In this context, it was felt that a system of financing homes by capitation grant could encourage homes to try to retain children who should suitably be returned home or placed elsewhere under supervision.

In addition: A further recommendation in the Kennedy Report in relation to the need to provide separately for works of a capital nature has been accepted and in the provision since 1971/72 of a capital sub-head for new buildings and since 1973/74 of a sub-head for grants towards the modernisation and adaptation of existing buildings (sub-heads E & H in Vote 32).

In relation to the system of capitation funding, the memo highlighted: The capitation grant for children committed through the courts is paid in approximately equal shares by the Department of Education and the Co. Council or Co. Borough (except for children over 17 years of age, where the entire grant is paid by the Department). In recent years, to avoid the stigma of committal proceedings, the tendency has been to have the child referred to the home wherever possible by the Health Authority, under the provisions of section 55 of the Health Act, 1953. Health Authorities pay a capitation grant for the children for whom they are responsible equal to the total of the State grant plus local authority grant in the case of committed children. Voluntary cases are paid by their parents or relatives – the amounts contributed are usually nominal.

He highlighted that not only was the Department concerned with the method of payment, but that the homes themselves were unhappy with the system of financing as: the money comes from so many sources and there is often delay in payment. From the administrative point of view the system is anomalous, wasteful and archaic. As the Government has decided that health charges will be transferred from the local rates to the central exchequer, the Health Authority grants will in future be borne directly by the Department of Health, whereas the grants for committed children will continue to be borne jointly by the Department of Education and the Co./Co. Borough Councils. There is much to be said for making all the grants a charge on central funds: this would involve releasing the councils from the obligations laid upon them by the Children Acts.

The Department was also under pressure to deal with the financing of the homes. This pressure has come from two related sources. Firstly, it was also a major recommendation of the Kennedy Report that large institutional buildings should be sub-divided into small self-contained units or, where new buildings were needed, these should be in the form of small group homes. This recommendation was accepted by the Department and funds for the conversion of old buildings and the erection of new ones have been made available by the Department of Finance since 1971. It was in fact already being implemented independently, so far as their sources would allow, by some of the homes. The effect of a move to small groups is, obviously, some sacrifice of the more economical functioning of the larger institutional structures, particularly as concerns staff numbers. The second source of pressure on the Department has been the decline in the number of religious available to staff the homes and the consequent employment by the conductors of lay people as staff in much greater numbers than before. Such lay people are not prepared to work for the salary rates which the capitation grant permits the conductors to offer them, nor are they prepared to enter a type of employment where salary rates and other conditions are not agreed on a general basis.

What made the situation particularly problematic was that: The present rates of grant are not based on any rationally worked-out norms...grant increases since 1969 have aimed solely at maintaining the position attained at that time when the grant was somewhat arbitrarily doubled in face of growing public awareness of its hopeless inadequacy. The grant in most cases appears more than adequate to cover the cost of maintaining the children, but it is not adequate to cover as well the salaries of care staff and wages of domestic staff. Some homes show a small surplus on the year’s working, but closer examination reveals that they have allowed no salaries (or only notional salaries) for religious staff engaged in full-time care work. On the other hand homes employing a majority of lay staff show heavy deficits, especially where male staff have to be employed to care for senior boys in homes conducted by nuns.

As a consequence, he argued: there would be a great deal of difficulty, from an administrative point of view in converting entirely to a budget system, as recommended by the Kennedy Report. The information to hand suggests that it would be largely a futile exercise to have homes present estimates of expenditure in the absence of parameters which could be applied to the items in such expenditures. In these circumstances, the Department believes that there is no alternative for the present to continuing to pay grants in respect of non-pay expenditure on a capitation basis.