How do children get to be the "out-of-control" teenagers we read about in the newspapers, often in court reports?
The book Keeping Children Safe offers an account of a confusion of events ending in what must feel like failure for all those involved.
It's a confusion of events because, on the strength of this book commissioned by the MidWestern Health Board, there is no clear, logical sequence for social workers, childcare workers or anyone else to hold onto.
The ingredients often - not always - include broken families, single parents, addiction to alcohol or drugs, possibly violent partners or former partners and a social service system at odds with itself.
A case conference convened this year after a child is hospitalised may not have a copy of the report of a meeting convened last year following a complaint from a public health nurse.
Nobody may have bothered to tell the public health nurse that a child about whom she is concerned is in hospital with a suspected non-accidental injury.
The hospital may be convinced the child will one day be admitted in a coffin but social workers may not share this view.
When the child goes to live with a possibly violent father, a social worker may keep "working" with the mother on her alcoholism while making no contact with the father.
Social workers may feel they do not need to investigate the possible non-accidental injury because that's being done by the Garda. The mother may give evidence in court which is the opposite to what she has been telling the health board.
What's missing here? Clearly the various players are not keeping each other informed and are not working in harmony. People are being lost sight of - the avoidance of contact with fathers is one of the themes of the book.
And perhaps, in many of these cases, nothing is going to sort out the families' problems. This is especially so in one lengthy case history in the book in which everybody except the parents were taking responsibility for addressing problems and helping the children.
Apparent co-operation by parents with social workers isn't good enough, as is pointed out by authors Harry Ferguson, professor of social policy and social work at University College Dublin, and Ms Maire O'Reilly, a researcher in social studies at University College Cork.
In the account above, one of the missing ingredients is a decision to take the children into care. Irish social workers are generally reluctant to take this step. That is a good thing, though this lay reader cannot help wondering if good quality residential care wouldn't be better for some of the children living in chaotic, risky situations.
We need a child protection system organised, trained and funded to deal with situations which will otherwise lead children down a desolate road.
pomorain@irish-times.ie