BARNARDO'S child care agency has called on the Government to set quality standards for children in residential care. It said these must be underpinned by effective monitoring, inspection and a complaints procedure.
The agency was responding to last night's RTE television documentary, Dear Daughter, on the treatment of children at a Mercy Sisters orphanage in the 1940s and 1950s. The Resident Managers' Association has also called for a complaints procedure for children in residential care.
The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy has already issued an apology this week for the abuse which took place at the Goldenbridge orphanage in Inchicore, Dublin, up to 50 years ago and has set up a telephone help line, staffed by professional counsellors.
In a statement yesterday, the director of Barnardo's, Mr Owen Keenan, called on the Eastern Health Board and the Department of Health to follow the nuns example and apologise for the abuse.
"These children were in the care of the health board, and the health authority which preceded it, and they had both a moral and legal duty to ensure their wellbeing", said Mr Keenan.
"That they failed to do so is an indictment of a system that also placed children into situations of danger in other establishments. If we are to succeed in professionalising the important child care service provided by residential centres, it is critical that lessons be learned from past experience", he added.
Barnardo's again called for the publication of the Madonna House report.
Mr Keenan said the only acceptable response by Government was an immediate commitment to a radical overhaul of the system of residential care, to ensure that nothing like the orphanage situation could ever happen again. It was essential that a programme of investment and development be initiated immediately if the provisions of the 1991 Child Care Act were to be meaningful.
The Resident Managers' Association, representing directors and managers working in residential child and youth care, said it was deeply distressed by the television programme and other recent news items. It recommended that structures be put in place to allow complaints from children to be "voiced, heard and acted upon".
The Sisters of Mercy help line is 1-800-800-123 in the Republic. Callers in the North should phone 0800-973-043.
Callers apparently jammed the help line following the screening of the documentary last night. Repeated efforts by The Irish Times to get through to it were unsuccessful, possibly due to the number of calls being made.
