THE HEALTH Service Executive’s national director of family and children’s services has called for radical reform of the child protection system to address a “crisis of credibility” with the service.
Gordon Jeyes, appointed in December following widespread concern about the deaths of children in State care, said yesterday a new child protection register should be set up.
He said those families placed on the register, who are identified as having a child “at risk”, should be subject to receiving compulsory support to ensure the safety of children. He said this should replace the existing child protection notification system.
“I don’t think Ireland has got a proper child protection system. It has good practice, it has superb practitioners and good procedures but it doesn’t have a system,” Mr Jeyes told a children’s conference in Dublin yesterday.
He said the child protection notification system, a key element of the current protection system where details of every child considered “at risk” are entered by social workers and gardaí, was not working effectively in all areas.
He said in one Dublin HSE area some 758 children were listed on the register, while in three other HSE areas, the number was about 150. He said the low numbers on the register were out of kilter with the number in care and suggested too many were listed as welfare – not child protection – cases.
“Ireland needs a carefully constructed and consistent child protection system where you are saying to a family this is the last-chance saloon. We need to work very carefully with people. We want to support you because we know you don’t want your children taken into care,” he said.
He said there needed to be more intervention in families with the back-up of court approval to enable social workers to provide support to families. This support could then be withdrawn when it was safe, said Mr Jeyes. He said the child protection system was suffering a “crisis of credibility” and there was a non-supportive culture for social work, in particular with the HSE.
Mr Jeyes, who was the UK’s first director of children’s services and has provided advice to governments in Scotland and at Westminster, will work closely with the new Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald to set up an agency dedicated to family and children’s services outside of the HSE.
Ms Fitzgerald said yesterday Mr Jeyes would be a lead figure working alongside her on the strategy to create the new agency.
The Government has decided to bring the family support agency, the youth justice service, the national education and welfare board and a new children and family support agency under the department.
Several pieces of legislation will also have to be passed to confer full powers on the Minister.