The second Family Law Matters report from the Courts Service, published on Monday, continues the invaluable work of bringing light to bear on the in camera treatment of families by the judicial system.
The report's particular emphasis on children in care, and notably its publication of a paper by Judge Conal Gibbons reproduced in these pages yesterday, provides important detail and some worrying insights into what he acknowledges to be a "hidden world ... of children on the edge of society, on the edge of their families, on the edge of the care system, and often on the edge of their lives".
Drawing on evidence from British social surveys Judge Gibbons points to the particular vulnerability of the 5,000 children currently in care here - they are far less likely to achieve academically, more likely to suffer from mental illness, less likely to receive full health inoculations, and more likely to end up in prison, on drugs, or in prostitution. Comparable data for Ireland is unfortunately not available, a reality that emphasises the importance of the longitudinal study of children which the ESRI and Trinity College launched earlier this year.
Judge Gibbons's warnings on the overstretch in the system of child protection are of concern, not least because they reflect problems that are persistent, and, in truth, known. He writes of social workers "with impossibly large caseloads in a climate of scarce resources and crisis management" and without the technology or systems they need.
He warns of serious communication problems between branches of the care services and that, although it appears no case like the British Victoria Climbie tragedy has happened here, there are parallels with the system that produced it. (Climbie, an Ivorian 8-year-old living in London, died in 2000, after spending her last months subject to repeated beatings and largely confined, starving, to a bath wrapped up in a plastic bag. An official report on her death suggested that there were "no fewer than 12 key occasions when the relevant services had the opportunity to successfully intervene in the life of Victoria.")
The shortage of resources for the care of children who arrive in Ireland unaccompanied or separated is also highlighted by the judge who expresses concern at the staffing of accommodation into which the 200 or so such children are currently placed by the HSE and from which some have gone missing. The Government is committed by the National Children's Strategy, he rightly points out, to housing such children in accordance with international best practice and to providing an independent guardian ad litem to safeguard their interests.