CHILD DEATH REVIEW GROUP REPORT:THE FINDINGS of the report into the deaths of children in care or known to the Health Service Executive are "a disgrace", Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald told a press conference yesterday.
She said it showed that the key to successful child protection is early intervention. “This is not about the State intervening to challenge or disrupt the family but to give badly needed and critical early support.”
She stressed that many children had positive experiences of care, and paid tribute to the many high-quality foster families who provided a second chance to children in a loving home.
However, the range of failures identified in the report into the 196 deaths found poor risk- assessment, poor co-ordination between services and poor flow of information. It also found limited access to specialist assessment and therapeutic services, limited inter-agency co-operation for children and families with complex needs, and a lack of early intervention.
Ms Fitzgerald said she welcomed the recommendations in the report. Referring to the recommendation that there should be an independent child death review unit, she said she would work on further developing the existing review panel for deaths and serious incidents, chaired by Dr Helen Buckley. She said the Health Information and Quality Authority would also soon assume a new role in relation to the oversight of child protection services.
The new child and family support agency, led by Gordon Jeyes, will be established and up and running in January 2013. Ms Fitzgerald said she would discuss with Minister of State for Mental Health Kathleen Lynch how to bring about a more seamless interface between child protection services and the child and adolescent mental health services. She would also discuss with Minister of State for Health Róisín Shortall a fresh approach to the harm to children posed by alcohol and substance abuse. She said she would be discussing with Minister for Justice Alan Shatter changes to the in-camera rule in childcare cases to ensure transparency while protecting the anonymity of children, and would strengthen the law regarding the entitlement of children to aftercare services.
Dr Geoffrey Shannon, one of the authors of the report, said that deference to parental rights in the Constitution impeded the State in intervening in a number of cases. When it did intervene, it often came too late. He said he hoped the legacy of the report would be a referendum on the rights of the child.
While acknowledging outstanding work was being done by foster carers in the childcare system, he said the report showed overwhelmingly that the child protection system “is not fit for purpose”. There were examples of good practice, but these were “sporadic and inconsistent”. Many social workers went beyond what was required, sometimes taking from their own resources to help the children when resources were denied by management.
Early intervention was vital, and, for many, the problems could be traced back to non-attendance or exclusion from school.
There seemed to be an overly legalistic approach to the problem of children with complex needs in special care units, and he urged the establishment of a working group to examine this issue.
Referring to the in-camera rule, which means that childcare cases cannot be reported, he said he was in favour of the media attending such cases at the judge’s discretion while protecting the anonymity of the child.
The other author of the report, Norah Gibbons of Barnardos, said they were very concerned about children known to the HSE who were not taken into care. The report detailed the deaths of 128 children known to the HSE who were not in care, of whom 68 died from non-natural causes. These included 16 suicides, 13 children unlawfully killed, five who died in house fires, two who died from head injuries whose cause was unknown and two who died from falls, according to the report.
She said there should be a national guardian ad litem service with established standards available to the court, which would assist in informing the court of the child’s views.