If we were really serious about protecting children, we would have a service accessible when it is needed writes IAN ELLIOTT.
THOSE RESPONSIBLE for the RTÉ1 television Prime Timeprogramme on the child protection service are to be congratulated. They focused attention on a service that is failing children. Those people from within the service who spoke out about the crisis deserve particular praise because of the career-risk implicit in their openness.
In recent times, the child protection issue has tended to slip out of the headlines. The programme, therefore, was a significant reminder. It is important to restate that the service operating in this country is failing children. It is not adequately resourced. It is not structured in a way that affords it any real chance of being effective.
For example, we do not have a nationwide out-of-hours emergency service for child protection. Where a response is required, it falls to the Garda to provide it, despite the fact that they are neither trained nor resourced to deliver it.
Child protection emergencies frequently happen outside of normal office hours. They are often associated with alcohol abuse, family tensions or rows. These rarely happen between the hours of nine and five, Monday to Friday. If we were really serious about protecting children, we would create a service that was accessible to them when they needed it.
I would wish to stress that my experience of the services to date would suggest that there are many well-motivated and caring people on the front line, but they are being asked to do an impossible job.
The question the programme posed was really quite simple. What value do we as a society put on a vulnerable child? We are a first world economy with grievously under-resourced child protection services. Not that this should be seen as simply a resource problem. It is much more than that.
It is a moral problem. It is a question of values for us as a nation. How important are our children to us? What is more important: building motorways, skyscrapers in our city centres and achieving tax cuts, or being able to guarantee the health and wellbeing of every child, particularly those at serious risk?
The level of resourcing for our child protection services is an expression of how we, as a society, value vulnerable children. The fact is that, if the political will was strong enough, all vulnerable children would be protected.
The situation the programme brought to light is neither unique nor without precedent. I had the opportunity of being involved in framing a response to a similar situation that arose in Northern Ireland following the completion of an inspection of the child protection services there in 2005. That inspection was rigorous. Poor work was discovered. Significant under-resourcing of frontline services was exposed.
This led to the putting in train of a countrywide strategy for reform, which I had the opportunity to lead. The reform implementation programme sought to address the practice on the front line of child protection services and deliver positive outcomes for children. It's not rocket science. It simply requires a coherent and committed response.
As a society, we elect politicians who create legislation placing a statutory duty on services to protect children, but who then fail to provide the resources needed to enable the relevant professionals to fulfil the task. This is fundamentally dishonest and needs to be exposed for what it is. But this is not to play Blame the Politicians. That's too easy. Child protection is the responsibility of every individual in society. We must all accept that we have a part to play in protecting our children. It is not and should not be viewed as the sole responsibility of a small number of dedicated professionals.
Nor is it simply a resourcing problem. A solution in this area would be based on four pillars: acceptance of the problem and willingness to solve it; development of a clearly defined, workable strategy; provision of resources - and not just financial resources; transparent monitoring.
The building of the first pillar in creating effective child protection services begins with political will. The second pillar requires that those in authority within the HSE define and endorse a strategy for creating and maintaining a framework for the delivery of services that holds a good prospect of delivering what vulnerable children need. Thereafter comes the human and financial investment required for success. Finally, there must be constant, transparent monitoring of the actions taken and achievements reached.
Monday night's programme has helped to bring this issue vividly back into the public domain. It has made avoidance or denial difficult (although, as we saw in the programme, not impossible) and increased the chances of full national acknowledgement of the threat to children at risk and the imperative that we fully address that threat.
This is a matter of life or death to vulnerable children.
Ian Elliott is chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland