MANY CHILDREN remain at risk of abuse because so little has been done to implement the findings of a State inquiry into child abuse more than 16 years ago, a former Supreme Court judge has said.
Ms Justice Catherine McGuinness, author of the 1993 Kilkenny Incest Report, said the report made a number of important recommendations following evidence of systemic failure among State authorities.
Despite the public outcry over the case, she said very few of the proposals have been adopted, and many of the failures in the case have been repeated in other abuse scandals in intervening years.
Among the recommendations were a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of children in the family, as well as better communication between gardaí and social work services.
She also said there was a vital need to provide resources for social work and child protection services to ensure everything possible is being done to protect the welfare of children at risk.
The inquiry involved examining the handling of a case where a man had sexually abused his daughter over a number of years.
However, social services felt constrained from intervening because of protections given the family in the Constitution.
Ms Justice McGuinness was speaking at a conference on child protection in UCC yesterday, organised in conjunction with the HSE and the Irish Association for Social Workers.
Ian Elliot, chief executive of the board which acts as the Catholic Church’s child-safety watchdog, said “remarkable” progress has been made by the Catholic Church in implementing child protection guidelines. He said there were “champions for children” in the church who deserved the highest praise for taking steps to improve child protection.
“They are at all levels of the church and many are within the hierarchy. There is a sense of purpose and commitment which is increasingly evident,” said Mr Elliott, head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children.
He said the task or organising and motivating the church’s 1,365 parishes, 26 dioceses and 166 religious congregations on the island to implement a single approach should not be underestimated. No one person can direct and require the various constituent parts of the church to act or to follow one particular course of action.
He said this “simple fact” helped explain why it has been so difficult to implement a single strategy in the past, or to apply across the whole church the valuable lessons learned from painful past experience.
Fergus Finlay of Barnardos said social workers in child protection services were “understaffed, undersupported and carrying excessive case loads”.
He said these services have been informed by a culture where resources have always gone to the most powerful voices rather than the most vulnerable.
He said changing the Constitution to give children a stronger voice will be critical in helping to change this culture. “If we don’t change the terms of reference within which children are discussed, we’ll never change the culture. That’s why those of us who work in the field are . . . broadly united around one view – we have to build a rights-based platform for our children,” Mr Finlay said.
Several social workers also told the conference they felt isolated and vulnerable in their day-to-day work due to heavy case loads and a lack of leadership at senior levels within the HSE.
Many said they wanted more support and lighter case loads to be able to intervene earlier in the lives of children and families at risk.
