Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald will this week publish a new Children First guidelines document on the management of child welfare and the reporting of abuse, which will be placed on a statutory footing.
Ms Fitzgerald also told the Dail she would shortly issue further details on the Government’s policy approach to the legislation on child protection, which she said had to “extend beyond the reporting of suspected abuse”.
Fianna Fáil spokesman on Children Charlie McConalogue who raised the issue during Dáil question time called on the Minister to clarify “whether she is planning on introducing mandatory reporting with specific penalties”. He also said it was “crucial” that proposed changes in reporting should be properly resourced.
Social workers had expressed unease that in other countries when mandatory reporting was introduced it led to a “large increase in the number of reports coming in, putting massive pressure on social workers”, Mr McConalogue said.
The Minister reminded the Fianna Fáil TD that the Ryan implementation report set December 2010 as the deadline for introducing legislation putting the Children First guidelines on a statutory footing but his party when in government did not meet that deadline.
She stressed the important element of the guidelines, “not just that people must report cases of child abuse but also co-operate with other agencies”. The guidelines, she said, “outline a whole way of working to protect children”.
Pressed again by Mr McConalogue about putting a mandatory reporting system in place, Ms Fitzgerald said “I will do what the former government agreed to do which is to put the Children First guidelines on a statutory basis as recommended by the Ryan report” and part of that was a reporting requirement.
She said however that it would not replicate systems such as in Australia where “the focus is on mandatory reporting alone”. Legislation would underpin the “comprehensive” guidelines, which were “an approach to the management of child protection cases to which every organisation working with children will need to adhere”.