In deciding to appoint an Ombudsman for Children, the Government has taken a step of enormous importance. It means that the facility which the child care services have had up to now to conduct their business behind closed doors will be greatly weakened.
As a result, the public will get a glimpse at how health boards, residential homes and other institutions operate and that exposure will be a most powerful engine for change.
At present, the social workers' union, IMPACT, and the Irish Association of Social Workers tell us of very large numbers of children being left at risk because of a shortage of resources, which means children left in danger of neglect, injury, emotional cruelty or sexual abuse, although concerns have been expressed to health boards.
An Ombudsman's report detailing just what was happening to a particular, though unnamed, child, and what was done about it, backed up by all the reports and documentation the Ombudsman will have the power to demand, will command answers.
This, in turn, will bring pressure to bear in many quarters. Governments will have to look to the adequacy of the resources they provide, social service managers will have to look at the extent to which they are ["]child friendly["] and social work departments will have to look at whether they are using their staff to the best effect. Organisations providing services to children with mental handicap and other disabilities will also have to become more accountable if children with disabilities have equal access to the Ombudsman.
But the appointment of an Ombudsman will not be a panacea. How will a child in foster care be able to make any connection with an Ombudsman, especially where there are no natural relatives to stand up for the child? The same question might be asked about a child in residential care, although residential care will be subject to inspection and monitoring by the Social Services Inspectorate. The Inspectorate, with three inspectors working to a chief inspector, is likely to start operating at full throttle in the New Year, after training its staff and conducting preliminary inspections. Between the Inspectorate and the Ombudsman for Children we will, by the end of next year, have an extremely important and valuable child protection structure in place.
Hopefully, the child abuse guidelines drawn up over the past eighteen months will also be in place. These detailed guidelines will make it very hard for any professional to say they did not know what to do about a suspicion of child abuse. In themselves they will place pressure on health boards to provide the back-up services needed to implement the guidelines. That, in turn, means pressure on Government to fund these services.
Mr Frank Fahey, the Minister of State for Children, is steering these initiatives through. If he is allowed to complete this work, his achievement will rank among the most significant of any Minister in the history of child care services in this state. But it must be understood that these initiatives will cost taxpayers' money and plenty of it.