ANALYSIS:LIKE MOST pieces of legislation, the Child Care Act (1991) is made up of mostly impenetrable legalese. There is, however, one simple line where the meaning rings loud and clear.
It states that health authorities have an overarching duty to “promote the welfare of children who are not receiving adequate care and protection”.
Correspondence between the State’s independent health services watchdog and the Health Service Executive provides a shocking insight into how the executive is failing to meet even this basic statutory duty for many children in foster care.
What is even more alarming is the apparently sluggish manner in which the executive has responded to urgent concerns raised by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa).
The authority’s findings which came on foot of an investigation into foster care in two local health offices areas in Dublin – Dublin north central and Dublin north west - were chilling.
They found that some children with foster parents have been quietly forgotten about, with no visit from a social worker for 10 years or more; that crucial files relating to children in care are missing; that child protection and welfare concerns in relation to more than 100 children in care had not been resolved.
These findings related to inspections prior to October 2009. Incredibly, many of these same concerns continue to persist today. The authority said on May 13th last that it was unaware of any initiative by the HSE to risk assess children in the wider child protection system.
When it met the HSE later in the month on May 27th, the authority said it still did not have the necessary assurances that actions were taking place to strengthen child protection services.
Last month, it told the executive once again that it was “not assured that the HSE is effectively managing its child protection service” in Dublin north west.
On each occasion, the executive insisted it had dealt with these concerns fully or they were being dealt with appropriately – yet at the same time acknowledged that it would not be possible to comply with mandatory regulations due to “legacy issues”.
We can only draw two reasonable conclusions: the HSE is either unwilling or unable to take the necessary measures to ensure vulnerable children receive adequate care and protection. It is inevitable that further questions will be asked of whether the HSE is capable of dealing with the social needs of children and families.
We have surely reached this tipping point where the status quo cannot continue any longer. By any objective assessment, the basic child protection structures which have existed until now are no longer fit for purpose.
The fact that Hiqa chose to go beyond the chief executive of the HSE, Brendan Drumm, and address the executive’s board directly about these concerns speaks volumes of its confidence in the current structures.
We have been assured for some time by senior HSE managers that the most serious failings in child protection relate to a minority of children in residential care with the most troubled and difficult backgrounds. The majority were in foster care, they tend to say, a much safer form of care where children are allocated social workers and child protection concerns are responded to swiftly. Now, even this argument is demolished.
The State failed to protect children in the past and passed on responsibility to religious orders, many of whom failed badly in their duty of care as documented by the Ryan report. How much longer are we going to tolerate yet another generation of vulnerable children being failed by the State?
