The Children's Court: Parents of troubled children are angry at what they see is the failure of health boards to step in and prevent young people from getting involved in drugs and crime, writes Carl O'Brien
Angry, desperate and unshaven, the father stood up in court to say he couldn't take much more.
"I'm crying out for help," he said, as his 17-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son stood before the Children's Court on a series of charges relating to public order and breach of bail conditions.
"I'm a lone parent. My daughter needs psychiatric care. When she was 14, they just let her go. There was a big report done when the family broke up, but the social worker said she was going off to Australia. I paid my taxes and did everything, so why aren't they contributing anything."
His daughter nonchalantly chewed some gum beside him, while his son looked into the middle distance with a thin smirk. They had repeatedly breached their bail conditions, the garda said, and there was every indication they would do so again. However, there were no secure residential places for the boy, while the only option for the girl was Mountjoy.
"The health board has no interest in this young girl," Judge Ní Chondúin, a calm and soft-spoken woman, commented sadly. "Has anyone gone out to her, to see if she is dead or alive? This is a case which is known to them. It's not something new. It's as if they dumped the file."
A week later, in the kitchen of his semi-detached home in west Dublin, the father-of-six rubs his eyes as he talks of the strain the ongoing saga has caused him and his family.
"You're on tenterhooks the whole time, you never know who's going to call to the door," he says. "I've been in court now at least 200 times and it begins to affect you mentally after a while.
"My daughter used to play with dolls when she was 12. By the time she was 13 she was getting into trouble. I've worked all my life, 60 hours a week, and brought the kids on holidays. Maybe I could have done more, but I never got any proper health board support. You're fighting the system the whole time."
Court 55 of the Children's Court in Dublin's Smithfield sees cases like this on a daily basis. Despite the glass roof and bright walls of the intimate courtroom, there is little to lighten the overwhelming sense of gloom and hopelessness that hangs over many of the cases.Almost without exception they consist of children from broken homes and poor areas who have fallen out of the education system. Many have learning disabilities or a disorder that has gone undiagnosed. Some have fallen in with the wrong crowd and keep coming to the attention of the gardaí. And rarely, very rarely, there is a child from a middle-class background.
The judges, compassionate and understanding, preside over the daily conveyor belt of cases in an informal atmosphere where unsolicited comments from children or their parents might be considered contempt of court anywhere else.However, their options are limited. They face little choice except to send a child to an institution or give the child yet another chance in the slim hope they will not re-offend.
"I think the courts are doing the best they can in very limited circumstances," says Sarah Molloy, a solicitor based in the Children's Court. "The problem is they are trying to fill a huge void created by completely inadequate social services. In effect, they are far exceeding what the jurisdiction should be.
"By the time a child comes before the courts, they are 13 or 14. By that stage, by and large, their antisocial behaviour is so entrenched that it's very, very difficult to try to get them to change. It's accepted behaviour among the peer group. It's the norm in their local environment. This is ultimately an issue of child poverty."
Dr Ursula Kilkelly, an expert on the juvenile justice system and a member of UCC's law faculty, is also critical of the role the court is asked to play.
"The current situation is a complete mess," she says. "It's crisis intervention and the court is the clearing house. But the judges have nowhere meaningful to send the children. Their hands are tied to a large extent. By the time it comes to court it's too late to do anything positive or constructive."
The failure of health boards to fulfil their duty of care to protect children is a regular theme running through the vast numbers of cases which pass through the Children's Court. There is a widely-held view among gardaí, solicitors and even the judiciary that what was once a structure charged with protecting children is increasingly strangled by a bureaucratic and legalistic approach to welfare issues.
Fr Peter McVerry, who has worked with young people at risk for three decades, says the need for early intervention is clear and urgent, yet authorities do not seem to recognise this.
"Parents of these children have a huge sense of being trapped. While other parents can pay for therapy, counselling and family intervention, these parents are trapped in a community with very few skills and resources."
"Often you find some of the good social workers leave the system," says Molloy. "They go in there with a great idea of changing things, and they just come up against a brick wall because there are so many layers of bureaucracy."
The Minister of State with responsibility for Children, Brian Lenihan, accepts many children have not received services they should have, but insists things are changing.
"A lot of the people you see before the court never benefited from early-intervention programmes now coming on stream," he says. "The programme of investment into this area started in 1997. Since then €185 million in additional funding has been spent on child welfare and protection services."
The case of a 17-year-old brain-damaged boy, forced to stay in Cloverhill prison because his health board said they could not find a suitable place for him, was an extreme example of what many see as serious lapses in State care. The boy, who shuffled into court with an open mouth and a lost stare, is estimated to have the mental age of a seven- or eight-year-old. The last time he had been released from detention, he ended up staying with his older sister, who was involved in prostitution, and her partner, a drug dealer. After committing further offences, the boy was forced to spend five weeks in jail while the health board tried to find somewhere for him.
When the health board announced in court last week that it had finally found a suitable place for him in Ballydowd special care centre, the boy smiled for the first time in weeks. However, one of his aunts, while delighted he is out of prison, sounds a note of caution over what will follow.
"He'll only be there for a few months, and he'll be 18 soon," she says, sitting at the kitchen table of her neatly-kept home in south-west Dublin. "Like the judge said, he could easily end up being thrown into a psychiatric hospital once he becomes an adult."
The health board, however, insists it is committed to meeting his needs after he becomes an adult and is looking for more suitable long-term accommodation. The boy's aunt, however, will need more convincing.
"I feel sad for him," she says with pitiful eyes. "We are the only one he has to look after him. He's more relaxed when he's around us. We'll make sure that what happened to him doesn't happen again."
While the State has come in for stinging criticism over the lack of early intervention programmes, health board-funded community services are beginning to make some difference at local level. Trisha Reynolds works in the Dóchas Family Support Centre in Clondalkin, Dublin, which provides service to young families in an environment where poverty, unemployment and truancy are major issues. The centre offers a range of services such as parenting courses, a breakfast club for children aged between eight and 12, holidays for families and various therapies for children.
"It's about broadening horizons and making people feel they don't have to get involved in drugs andcrime. We have seen huge benefits already among the children. They stay in the school system for longer and, as a result, avoid drugs and other risk factors," she says.
However, like many such programmes, there is growing concern that funding cutbacks will threaten many of their services.
"We don't publicise the service here because otherwise we'd be overwhelmed. What we have is simply a drop in the ocean.
"With cuts in funding this year, we're having to look at what services we can keep going. For instance, we have taken 70 families on holidays, which they also contribute towards, but we're unlikely to be able to do so this year."
Given the demand for residential places, there have been claims that juvenile crime is soaring out of control in recent years. However, Garda statistics do not appear to bear this out. Inspector Finbarr Murphy, deputy director of the Garda Juvenile Liaison Office, says latest figures indicate levels of offending are relatively steady, and staff are working to reduce offending through "diversion programmes".
"The whole idea is to keep children out of court," he says. "It's about giving children a chance rather than criminalising them early on. It's a form of early intervention, of identifying problems before they develop further, and getting other agencies involved in the child's welfare."
There were 19,000 referrals to the Juvenile Liaison scheme in 2001, and 20,600 in 2002, while figures for 2003 are expected to be similar. These crimes mostly relate to theft, public order, drunkenness or so-called joyriding.
While more work remains to be done in expanding the scheme, Insp Murphy says the majority of young offenders do not commit more crimes, while statistics suggest there is a "hardcore" of around 3,000 recidivist young offenders.
"The majority of teenagers are going out, playing football, doing their own things and not getting into trouble. For those that do come to our attention, the fact that a garda calls to the door of the house and talks with the family, and identifies problems, is usually enough to steer them right."
With a shortage of community-based intervention and appropriate health services, inevitably judges are forced to put some children into detention as a last resort. On many occasions over the last month there were no free places in institutions such as Oberstown or St Patrick's Institution. However, the question of whether to simply build more detention units is a controversial one.
In the run-up to the 2002 general election, when two gardaí were killed in a crash involving two so-called joyriders, it prompted a flurry of political activity. Fine Gael compared parts of west Dublin to the "wild west", while the Minister for Justice rushed out to announce new places for young offenders.
"The people who vote are the people who own property," says Sarah Molloy, "who don't want to see their cars being robbed, and politicians probably feel they can appeal to them more easily by building more prison cells and introducing stricter law-and-order measures."
Fr McVerry is scathing about the standard of political leadership which, he says, is responsible for lack of action in dealing with the root causes of offending by young people.
"A lot of people are concerned about the situation - I get phone calls from ordinary people all the time. But they feel they are powerless to bring about any changes. We're not being given any leadership in trying to address the real issues."
Brian Lenihan, however, says major strides are being made in changing the way children are treated in the juvenile justice and welfare systems.
"The Children Act, 2001 provides a new framework for the development of juvenile justice with an emphasis away from residential and custodial care, to care in the community. The family conferencing provisions and other aspects of the Act have implications for social workers in enabling young people and their families to identify options and make decisions to improve the quality of their own lives," he says.
However, campaigners argue that the critical but expensive parts of the Act have not been moved forward. Instead, they say populist but ineffective measures, such as fining parents for the actions of their children, have been introduced. The Minister, however, says it will take a few years until the Act is fully introduced. "We have made a lot of progress and there are encouraging signs in the reduction in numbers being detained. The challenge now is to build the community supports we need."
Despite the Minister's upbeat tones, not everyone is optimistic. The father of the two troubled children was back before the court yesterday, still wondering what future lay in store for his son and daughter.
"There are very little prospects," he says sombrely, looking out the window of his house. "I feel at a loss. I'm just taking one day at a time. You don't know what will happen next. I often wonder will anything change. Maybe I'll just sell the house and . . ." his voice trails off.
"At this stage I'm sick of fighting the system," he says. "I worked for 21 years, I paid my taxes, I did the best I could for my kids. Now it's time for the health board to live up to its responsibilities."