While childhood is fleeting, it should be nurtured by the State and better protected by the law, writes Norah Gibbons.
The policies pledged during the forthcoming election, and implemented in its aftermath, will have the power to shape over a million childhoods.
As a country, we want to believe that we nurture, cherish and protect all our children equally. We maintain this belief even when faced with evidence of the realities lived by a significant proportion of children who face a systemic and systematic failure by the State to nurture, cherish or protect them.
There are 110,000 children living in consistent poverty, not relative poverty or at risk of poverty, but consistent, grinding poverty. About one in three children, from what are euphemistically known as "disadvantaged" areas, cannot read or write even after eight years of formal education, according to the Department of Education's own figures
There are 2,000 children on the waiting list for psychiatric assessment and waiting times are running between 12 and 18 months. And when they are eventually seen, there are only 20 in-patient beds available nationally for the assessment and treatment of adolescents under the age of 16
Eight out of 10 children are being taught in classes larger than the Government target of 20 pupils, while 25 per cent of children are in classes with 30 or more students. The services we then expect children to interact with, often at times when children are particularly vulnerable and in need of protection, are far from the child-centred, accessible services promised. For example:
Children continue to be admitted to adult psychiatric wards in contravention of stated policy. Specialist support services for children and teenagers continue to be neglected. A newly homeless child on the streets of Dublin who is not classed as being immediately in crisis will have to wait until after 8pm before going to a Garda station and declaring themselves homeless.
National guidelines for the protection and welfare of children are being implemented on a day-to-day basis, leading to inconsistencies and delays throughout the system with the potential effect of further traumatising children.
When they interact with the legal system, children are silent until spoken to, if they are spoken to at all. A recent review of family law proceedings found that in only one out of 21 cases were the child's wishes mentioned in relation to access.
Children in long-term foster care are waiting for the Childcare Amendment Bill (2006) to be passed so their day-to-day parents can sign for them to go on school trips and get necessary medical treatment.
Ireland was one of the first countries in the EU to sign up to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in 1993 and Ireland is among the last to ratify this key convention which guarantees the rights of children at the centre of inter-country adoptions. Yet we continue to process around 400 intercountry adoptions every year and crucial reforms in adoption practice and processes promised in the 1990s have yet to happen.
Children involved in very difficult and contentious private law cases are missing out because section 11 of the Children Act 1997 has not been implemented. This would allow courts an opportunity to get the views of a child through an independent "guardian ad litem" whose qualifications and experience would be clearly available to all parties and subject to the rigours of the Court process. Why should children's voices not be heard in matters that directly affect them?
Children in trouble with the law who come before the courts are losing out too because the courts cannot use section 77 of the Children Act (2001) to ask the HSE to convene a family welfare conference and report back to the court on what is best for the child and whether they need care or a criminal conviction.
The first years of a child's life are the most critical in terms of learning and development. If a child's developmental needs go unanswered in this period, it is not a matter of simply dealing with them at a later stage. Development does not work as if all periods of someone's life had equal potential. Successive governments, however, have shied away from providing a universal free quality early childhood education and care service.
The Government's National Childcare Investment Programme, welcome as it is, will create 2,000 childcare places a year over the next five years for children aged three to four. Put that figure next to the fact that there are an estimated 112,541 three- to four-year-olds in the country.
Progress has been made by those who influence and make policy decisions. They are now viewing a child's life in totality and taking a "whole child" approach as opposed to thinking of children's lives in terms of isolated elements without any relationship to each other. One of the key manifestations of this change in thinking is the Office of the Minister for Children. The office brings together the main Government functions relating to children - surely then such an office should be headed by a minister with full Cabinet decision-making powers.
For anyone working with children or indeed a parent, the gap between what has been promised and the reality on the ground seems to be ever-widening, as last week's Inspector of Mental Health Services Report 2006 noted. The Government that holds power after this election has an unprecedented opportunity to make a difference to one million childhoods and ensure that no child gets left behind.
The last word should go to Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, whose simple eloquence belies the urgency and power of her message that children cannot wait:
"Many things we need can wait, the child cannot.
Now is the time his bones are being formed,
his blood is being made,
his mind is being developed.
To him we cannot say tomorrow,
his name is today."
Norah Gibbons is the director of advocacy with Barnardos, which is launching "A Million Reasons to Get It Right - the Children's Declaration" this morning in Buswells Hotel, Kildare Street, Dublin