THE STORY of 18-year-old Tracey Fay is a tragic narrative of neglect and abandonment and a graphic example of how our child protection system is failing to support some of the most vulnerable youngsters.
Shortly after being placed in the care of the State when she was 14, social workers remember an innocent teenager with no real involvement in crime or drugs. Her requirements were relatively simple: assessment of her health needs and a stable care placement with therapeutic support to help her deal with past traumas. Instead, as an unpublished review of her care commissioned by the Health Service Executive shows, she fell through the cracks of a system which was never able to meet her needs.
Rather than being placed in stable accommodation with access to support, she ricocheted for the most part through a series of chaotic placements in BBs and emergency care placements. This world of emergency care is notoriously rough; the lack of any structured day means vulnerable children end up mixing with older teenagers, exposing them to drugs, alcohol, prostitution and intimidation. When she needed proper support, a series of recommendations for her to be professionally assessed was never implemented within a reasonable timeframe. In January 2002, four years after being admitted into care, she died of a drugs overdose. She left behind unanswered questions over how a child could be let down by a system legally obliged to provide vulnerable young people with suitable care.
If her story sounds familiar, that's because it is. The tragic lives of other vulnerable children in care, such as 17-year-old David Foley who died in similar circumstances, have been documented in this newspaper over recent months. The HSE says local management, in conjunction with regional childcare services, are considering the recommendations in a report on Tracey Fay and an agreed implementation plan will be drawn up.
But this is not a local problem. Nationally, social work teams say they are under-resourced and unable to deal with hundreds of notifications of suspected child abuse. Too often they are being forced to work on an emergency basis with children at risk.
Much greater political will is needed to ensure child protection services are radically reformed. The alternative is that yet more children will fall through the cracks of our broken child protection system, with consequences. We cannot allow this to happen.