The High Court was told on Wednesday that the Child and Family Agency has breached its duty of care to a teenager who recently turned up at a hospital “cut up and sliced by other young people” while at large in the centre of Dublin.
Barrister Brian Barrington told Ms Justice Teresa Pilkington that the 17-year-old had at the time been living in a night shelter with nowhere to go during the day.
Mr Barrington, who appeared with Cillian Thornton of Connolly Finan Fleming Solicitors for the boy’s guardian ad litem, said the injured child had walked away from the hospital concerned without getting proper treatment.
Judge Pilkington, who said there was “grave and ongoing concern” for the child’s needs, granted his guardian leave to legally challenge the agency’s alleged failure to provide care, if necessary in a secure setting, for the boy.
The judge accepted that Mr Barrington had comprehensively outlined an arguable case on the guardian’s behalf for a review of the circumstances currently applicable to the boy whose whereabouts is currently unknown.
Mr Barrington told the court that the boy’s girlfriend was expecting his baby shortly and that both habitually used drugs. This fact, and concern for his own mother, may have been responsible for the boy’s absconding.
He told the court it was the statutory duty of the Child and Family Agency to provide accommodation and care for the teenager but had deferred consideration of his needs. The agency had claimed there were no beds available in suitable units but Mr Barrington said it was the agency’s duty to provide them.
“There are units lying idle and the boy himself has expressed a desire for secure care. The agency is meant to have such places available and are in breach of their statutory duty,” he said.
Mr Barrington said the guardian ad litem was seeking a declaration that since May the agency was in breach of statutory duties imposed on it under the Child Care Act for the child’s care and accommodation and that arrangements previously in place were unreasonable.
A declaration is also being sought that the agency has failed to make a determination that the boy is in need of special care and a place in one of its facilities and in its failure to apply to the High Court for a special care order.
Mr Barrington said the agency’s decision to defer a formal determination “until a place is available” was beyond its powers, unreasonable and unlawful. He said the Child Care Act obliged the agency to apply for a special care order where it had determined that the child required special care but that determination had been postponed.