A NATIONAL audit of incidents of abuse and how they are handled in residential and day services in the intellectual disability sector which was promised by the Health Service Executive (HSE) two years ago has still not begun, it was confirmed yesterday.
The audit was promised by the HSE when it appeared before an Oireachtas Health Committee in June 2008 as the committee began examining the report of an inquiry into abuses perpetrated on people with disabilities at Brothers of Charity Services in Galway over a 33-year period from 1965 to 1998.
At that meeting, Ger Reaney of the HSE said it was about to tender for an expert to carry out the audit of policies and procedures in place to respond to allegations of sexual abuse in all services for people with intellectual disability across the State. He said terms of reference for the audit were being finalised.
However, when the HSE appeared before the committee again yesterday, Anne Kenneally, national lead for disability services with the HSE, said the audit was only now about to begin. She said questionnaires would be sent out “in the coming weeks” to service providers in relation to their policies, procedures and training in relation to client protection. This was the first phase of the review, she said. “It is anticipated the collection of the questionnaire will be completed by October 2010,” she said.
“Phase II will involve a more in-depth onsite audit of a targeted sample of organisations, involving interviews with key individuals eg CEOs, designated persons and frontline staff members. It would also involve audit of relevant records. The output of phases I and II should result in a final report,” she said.
It is understood while the HSE initially planned to get outside consultants to conduct the audit, it will now carry out the audit itself but an outside expert will provide advice on the way in which it should be done. Differences of opinion on how the audit should be carried out – with the National Federation of Voluntary Bodies wanting it to be done by independent experts – are believed to have contributed to the delay.
Meanwhile Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter asked HSE and Department of Health officials who attended yesterday’s committee meeting when a proper investigation would take place into the abuses perpetrated at Brothers of Charity Services in Galway. He said it had already been acknowledged that the first review, which took eight years, was inadequate and its terms of reference unsatisfactory. He said while the McCoy report found evidence that up to 21 intellectually disabled children were abused, some 133 had got compensation from the residential institutions redress board.
Mr Reaney and Bairbre Nic Aongusa, director of the office for disability and mental health in the Department of Health, said they couldn’t make a judgment on whether there should be another inquiry. Ms Nic Aongusa said consideration would have to be given to whether it was making best use of resources going back over events of many years ago that had already been investigated. Or was it better to focus on ensuring systems were put in place to ensure it didn’t happen again, and moving people from institutions into the community.