A LACK OF Government policy, appropriate care placements and inter-agency cooperation is leading to some of the country’s most vulnerable children “falling through the cracks”, according to a new report by the Child Law Project (CLP). 

The organisation has attended child protection hearings in the District, Circuit, High and Supreme Courts over three years from mid-2021 until the middle of this year. 

The report states that in those three years, the CLP has observed “a national crisis unfolding”.

It describes “an acute shortage of appropriate care placements” for children, which is having “a domino effect that risks collapsing the care system”. 

For the first time ever, the CLP has seen cases of young children for whom no foster carer is available, children as young as four years old being place in residential care and a “waiting list” for admission to special care.

It said these retrograde steps “have undermined progress made over the past twenty years” and is taking place in the context of “a vacuum of national policy and continued weak interagency cooperation”. 

It also highlights a “dismal response by the HSE to meet the mental health and disability needs of children in care or at risk of entering care”. 

“These problems are having a detrimental impact on a cohort of vulnerable children and it is these cases that now dominate much of the discussions in child care proceedings.”

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, special rapporteur on child protection, said the report “shines a light on a care system creaking at the seams, and rising judicial concern about the absence of appropriate care placements”.

This report sounds the alarm: some of Ireland’s most vulnerable children are falling through the cracks. The key question now is how the State will respond.

According to the report, there has been an increase in the number of instances where members of the judiciary and other professionals “expressed concern and frustration” about failings in the care and health system.

Courts

“We saw increasing examples of cases returning to court as a placement had broken down or where the judge was keeping the case under active review as a means of ensuring agreed actions were followed through.”

The report includes a survey of 38 court venues in all 24 districts of the District Court.

It found that in over 70% of those courts, child protection cases were heard alongside family, licensing and criminal matters, despite a legal requirement that they be heard separately.

Many of the courts are “severely over-worked”, it said, which affects how child care proceedings are dealt with.

Most districts had only one judge to deal with “sometimes enormous lists”. One judge heard child care cases on a day where 160 matters were listed. 

For parents attending court, many had to wait around the courthouse all day for their case to be called, with nowhere to sit or talk in private to their lawyer.

The report also found that almost a third of parents (29%) in child care cases had a disability, of whom two-thirds had mental health problems and most of the remainder had a cognitive disability.

Dr Carol Coulter, CLP executive director, said: “The provision of appropriate supports to vulnerable parents, especially those with disabilities, could help keep children in their families and meet Ireland’s obligations under international human rights law.

“Like the supports needed by children with complex needs, this requires cooperation across a number of government departments.”

Lack of appropriate placements

The report states that a common thread in many, but not all cases, is that the child has experienced traumatic events and suffered harm, including “numerous incidents of abuse and chronic neglect”. 

It describes instances where Tusla could not offer a child any care placement, which meant that the child returned to live at home and was placed in an unregistered placement.

Cases where young children of pre-school and primary-school age were placed in residential care were also observed. “This is unusual as foster care would normally have been the first choice for a young child,” the report states. 

In one case, three siblings of primary school age, had nowhere to go after their relative foster care placement broke down.

The judge said the situation was “unacceptable and appalling” and that the children could have grounds for a future civil action against the State for negligence.

The children had been in various out-of-hours emergency placements for the previous four or five weeks. However, some of those placements had also broken down, which meant further moves and the children missing school.

The children did not know where they were going to be staying after school on the following day and if they would be able to stay together.

The report states that the shortage of placements “is particularly worrying” in the area of special care, as it had led to delayed admission to and exit from special care.

Special care

This is defined as “short term, stabilising and safe care in a secured therapeutic environment.”

Admission to special care can only take place if the High Court grants a special order in respect of the child.  A special care order is for an initial period of three months with the possibility of two further extensions

The CLP attended special care hearings concerning 48 children, the majority of whom were in special care for a long period of time or had a number of re-entries into special care over a number of years.

There were several reasons for this, such as the complexity of the cases and the lack of an appropriate onward placements to allow the child to transition out of special care.

In multiple cases, it was agreed that a specialist placement offering a high level of support was needed to keep a child safe and address their specific needs and behavioural difficulties, but no such placement was available.

The CLP said many of the children in need of a such a placement “has been in care, including special care, for significant periods of their childhood”.

It said the lack of step-down residential placements is “hindering the timely discharge” of children from special care. “This is particularly concerning given that these are secure settings.”

In some cases, a child was detained longer than necessary in special care due to the lack of a follow-on placement.

The continuation of detention where is it no longer warranted raises the question of whether or not such detention is lawful and if there is a potential breach of the child’s right to liberty as provided for under Article 40 of the Constitution.

The report also highlights that there is currently no national policy or strategy on child protection and alternative care.

“There is no whole-of government document that identifies the challenges faced and Government commitments to address these.”

Concluding, the report states that the child care system is “failing some of our most vulnerable children and families” despite the dedication of many professionals. 

“The issues identified are systemic and require urgent, coordinated action across Government.”

It called for a short-term action plan to address the current crisis in accessing appropriate care placements, with a particular focus on residential care, as well as investment in a national strategy on alternative care, which “would allow space to reflect beyond the immediate crisis and set out a vision for how the alternative care system will operate over the coming ten to twenty years”.

The Child Law Project has published 1,050 reports from child protection proceedings in the courts since its establishment in 2012, while maintaining the anonymity of the children and families involved.

Under its current three-year programme of work, court reporting ceased in June this year and the last volume of court reports was published in July.

This is the final analytical report to be published under the CLP’s three-year grant from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which ended on 31 October. From then, funding has ceased for the project.

On 25 October, the Department announced it would begin a competitive procurement process to award a new contract for court reporting. The CLP said it is “considering the Department’s documentation”. 

The full report is available to read here.