The State’s child care system is in crisis and some of Ireland’s most vulnerable children are “falling through the cracks”, the latest report of the Child Law Project (CLP) has warned.
A lack of suitable placements is having “a domino effect that risks collapsing the care system”, “a crisis is unfolding”, and a ‘whole-of-government’ response is urgently required, the report concludes, having analysed case trends over three years.
Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, special rapporteur on child protection, said: “This report sounds the alarm: some of Ireland’s most vulnerable children are falling through the cracks. The key question now is how the State will respond.”
Ms Gallagher and the president of the District Court, Judge Paul Kelly, will be among the speakers at an event on Monday launching the report.
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Titled Falling Through the Cracks: An Analysis of Child Care Proceedings from 2021 to 2024, the report comes as the Garda investigation into the missing, presumed dead, eight-year-old child Kyran Durnin, is continuing. The boy was not in State care but Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, previously engaged with his family and has provided Government with its reviews of that interaction.
Dr Maria Corbett, chief executive of the CLP, said it has seen cases of children flourishing in care but also observed “an increasing number of instances” where judges and other professionals are concerned about children “falling through the cracks”.
The “serious gaps” in the State’s response to children include an “acute shortage” of foster and residential care placements; a “dismal response” by the HSE to meeting the disability, mental health and addiction needs of children in care; and “weak” inter-agency co-operation.
Dr Corbett welcomed the Department of Children’s establishment of an inter-agency committee on vulnerable children and progress towards reform of the family justice system and child care law.
However, there is still “no whole-of-government strategy on child protection” and “no roadmap” to provide necessary legal and policy changes to create a new placement model of high support care for children with complex needs and those at risk of exploitation or trafficking.
The report discloses that almost one-third of parents (29 per cent) in child care cases suffered from a disability, of whom two-thirds had mental health problems and most of the remainder had a cognitive disability.
CLP executive director Dr Carol Coulter said appropriate supports for vulnerable parents, especially those with disabilities, could help keep children in their families and meet Ireland’s international human rights obligations.
A CLP survey of 38 District Court venues found that in more than 70 per cent of those courts, child care cases are being heard alongside other cases in often-crowded lists despite a legal requirement that they be heard separately.
The report includes several anonymised case studies of children’s encounters with the legal system, including the two below.
Case Study One
This concerned a boy with very serious behavioural problems, including addiction to aerosols from the age of 10, an eating disorder and violent attacks on care staff. He entered the care system at age 14 and spent time in special care, detention and residential care. A psychologist, concerned about his extreme emotional and behavioural problems, found both parents were unable to parent him due to the father’s health issues and domestic violence and the mother’s traumatic background, abuse of alcohol and heroin and mental health issues.
When his case was reviewed, the District Court heard the boy had still not had a Camhs assessment and he had been placed in a holiday home because no suitable placement was available.
Case Study Two
This case study concerned the granting of full care orders for four young children from a family known to the Child and Family Agency for some time. All four had experienced significant adverse childhood events, their mother had received extensive supports and a safety plan for the children had been put in place.
The agency’s concerns included a “drastic” decline in the family’s circumstances after the mother became involved with a man with a serious criminal conviction. In one incident, when the mother and children were in a car with a friend of the mother’s, her boyfriend chased them and rammed their car. In another, after he was arrested following a serious domestic violence incident, there were serious attacks at the mother’s home, including the firebombing of her car. The care orders were granted on foot of evidence from social workers, a Garda and a clinical psychologist.
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