IT IS impossible to overstate the extent of the failures highlighted in foster care services across parts of Dublin. Reports published by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) show these services were in a state of crisis when they were inspected last year. Children were left in unsafe care placements for years, despite evidence of child protection concerns. Other young people in care did not have contact with social workers for up to a decade or more. Perhaps even more disturbing is the shocking inaction of senior Health Service Executive (HSE) management.
Despite evidence that children were being left in unsafe placements, little or nothing was done. Even after the authority highlighted these problems last year, the HSE’s lethargic response lacked any sense of urgency.
The authority’s reports state there was a lack of recognition at senior management level that childcare regulations existed to safeguard and protect vulnerable children. It went further, concluding there were serious deficiencies in the the governance of services and a lack of a child-centred culture at management level in particular.
These are damning findings. What is the purpose of having social services or child protection teams if it is not to protect the welfare of children who need it most? And what hope is there for vulnerable children when senior managers in charge of the services do not seem to appreciate this?
When failures in child protection were exposed in the Catholic church, there were calls to remove those who presided over these failures. And rightly so. The least we might expect is that in addition to addressing these problems, there would be some level of accountability for those in charge of these services.
The response of the Health Service Executive to date has been that it is not seeking to apportion blame for these failures. This unwillingness to confront failure, apportion blame or fundamentally reform a clearly defective system is sadly endemic within our health services and across wider public life. Unless there are sanctions against senior management who have failed children, it is difficult to see how this culture of inaction will ever change.
This is particularly difficult for frontline social workers who struggle to do their jobs in a dysfunctional child protection system, yet are among the first to be blamed when things go wrong.
We need radical changes to our child protection services, with clearer lines of accountability and responsibility. The Government, too, must ensure there are sufficient resources available to provide an acceptable level of service. The head of Hiqa Tracey Cooper said she believes these foster care reports will prove to be a watershed moment in driving improvements in safeguarding children. We can only hope she is right.
The alternative is that children will continue to be put in unsafe care placements, and overworked social workers will be unable to respond to cases of abuse or mistreatment until it is too late.