CHILDREN’S GROUPS and social workers have called for greater emphasis on the early assessment of children at risk to help protect their safety and welfare.
This follows articles in yesterday’s Irish Times which reported that hundreds of urgent childprotection reports are not being assessed or followed up, leaving many young people at high risk of abuse or neglect.
Details of internal social work files showed highly vulnerable children are not receiving any response from front-line child protection workers due to heavy caseloads and understaffing.
Children’s charity Barnardos yesterday said the assessment of potential risk was the least any child should be able to expect from a system that is continuing to struggle to respond to child protection concerns.
“The cases referenced by social workers are very serious and by any standards require a response from the system charged with responsibility for child welfare,” said chief executive Fergus Finlay.
“We cannot underestimate the challenges faced by social workers on the front line every day. However, there can be no ambiguity about the necessity of timely assessments when concerns are raised about the welfare of a child.”
He said while resources were a problem for all public services, political leaders must examine where our priorities lie regarding the allocation of resources.
“It is hard to argue that any services are as important as those that seek to protect very vulnerable children from harm,” he said.
The Health Service Executive has acknowledged that there are gaps in child protection but said it has launched a three-year reform programme to improve services.
It said some 200 additional social workers have been hired on foot of the recommendations of the Ryan report into institutional abuse of children.
HSE national director for child and family services Gordon Jeyes said last weekend the culture in the executive was “appalling” and that if it was possible to get it wrong, the HSE got it wrong.
In addition to problems with resources, the Irish Association of Social Workers said recent high-profile abuse cases had contributed to significant increases in referrals to social workers.
Staff say the number of abuse or neglect concerns has risen in some areas by at least 50 per cent over the same period last year.
The association says many staff are faced with overwhelming caseloads, while unofficial recruitment bans to cover staff on leave mean they are unable to respond to significant numbers of referrals.
Ineke Durville, the organisation’s spokeswoman, said that while recruitment of additional social workers had helped, staffing levels in social services were still considerably behind those in many other jurisdictions.
