SOCIAL WORK can be a complex and challenging profession. For those on the front line of child protection, it means making life-changing decisions about vulnerable children’s welfare. They are not easy choices and few can be expected to get it right all the time. Yet, what is striking about the findings of the Roscommon abuse case report is the chronic and spectacular failure of social services to intervene decisively over a 15-year period, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious abuse and neglect.
Neighbours, teachers, relatives and health professionals all expressed growing alarm over the extent of neglect and emotional abuse endured by the children. No social worker sat down with the children until 11 years after the first concerns were reported. No attempt to place them in care was made until some of them were scarred by years of sexual abuse.
A lack of resources was not a major problem. Neither were there obstacles relating to a lack of legislative power or limited contact with the family. Instead, the report highlights a range of problems with social work practice. This includes faulty decision-making, poor interdisciplinary working, ineffective assessment procedures, a failure to learn from previous care reviews and ignorance of childcare legislation. All of these failures contributed to the children being failed by a system designed to protect them.
Many of these findings are particularly shocking because they have been made so many times before. The Kelly Fitzgerald case in 1986 and the reports into the Kilkenny incest case (1993) and the McColgan case (1995) all called for better co-operation between State agencies, a more standardised approach to dealing with abuse concerns and more emphasis on preventive measures. Incredibly, these recommendations have never been properly acted on. These gaps go to the heart of much of what is wrong with our child protection and social work service. If we are ever to ensure more children are not failed by social work services, the system must learn from its mistakes.
Accountability is vitally important. Staff members directly involved and their senior managers must be held accountable for chronic failures. All necessary training should be provided to frontline staff. Improved leadership is needed within the Health Service Executive in order to drive change. Plans to appoint a national director supported by a clinical team must be advanced without delay.
The HSE says it is responding by issuing new practice guidance to ensure the voice of children is central to all child protection work. It has also pledged to undertake a national audit of other child neglect cases to identify any wider failings. It will be judged, however, by its actions rather than its words. Any failure to follow through on these pledges will render its apology to the children meaningless. It is too late to restore the damaged childhoods at the centre of this Roscommon case. The HSE must now do everything in its power to help ensure other children’s lives are not scarred in the same way.