Call for fast response to children at risk reports

CARL O'BRIEN

CHILDREN’S GROUPS and social workers have called for greater emphasis on the early assessment of children at risk to help protect their safety and welfare.

This follows articles in yesterday’s Irish Times which reported that hundreds of urgent childprotection reports are not being assessed or followed up, leaving many young people at high risk of abuse or neglect.

Details of internal social work files showed highly vulnerable children are not receiving any response from front-line child protection workers due to heavy caseloads and understaffing.

Children’s charity Barnardos yesterday said the assessment of potential risk was the least any child should be able to expect from a system that is continuing to struggle to respond to child protection concerns.

“The cases referenced by social workers are very serious and by any standards require a response from the system charged with responsibility for child welfare,” said chief executive Fergus Finlay.

“We cannot underestimate the challenges faced by social workers on the front line every day. However, there can be no ambiguity about the necessity of timely assessments when concerns are raised about the welfare of a child.”

He said while resources were a problem for all public services, political leaders must examine where our priorities lie regarding the allocation of resources.

“It is hard to argue that any services are as important as those that seek to protect very vulnerable children from harm,” he said.

The Health Service Executive has acknowledged that there are gaps in child protection but said it has launched a three-year reform programme to improve services.

It said some 200 additional social workers have been hired on foot of the recommendations of the Ryan report into institutional abuse of children.

HSE national director for child and family services Gordon Jeyes said last weekend the culture in the executive was “appalling” and that if it was possible to get it wrong, the HSE got it wrong.

In addition to problems with resources, the Irish Association of Social Workers said recent high-profile abuse cases had contributed to significant increases in referrals to social workers.

Staff say the number of abuse or neglect concerns has risen in some areas by at least 50 per cent over the same period last year.

The association says many staff are faced with overwhelming caseloads, while unofficial recruitment bans to cover staff on leave mean they are unable to respond to significant numbers of referrals.

Ineke Durville, the organisation’s spokeswoman, said that while recruitment of additional social workers had helped, staffing levels in social services were still considerably behind those in many other jurisdictions.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0802/1224301719377.html

The Irish Times - Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Hundreds of children at risk as staff forced to ignore reports

CARL O'BRIEN, Chief Reporter

HUNDREDS OF urgent child protection reports are not being assessed or followed up, leaving vulnerable young people in situations where they are at risk of ongoing neglect or abuse, internal social work files show.

In interviews with The Irish Times , social work teams in several parts of the State say they are being forced to ignore potentially serious reports of suspected abuse or neglect due to heavy workloads and under-staffing.

Staff in social services say they are fearful that mistakes are being made and that some at-risk children may die as a result of the failure to intervene with vulnerable young people.

“I feel it’s only a matter of time before there is a major scandal, such as a child being exposed to horrific abuse or neglect due to our inability to respond. Many of us fear that when something goes wrong, we’ll be left out on our own,” one social worker said.

Among the kinds of urgent cases outlined in social work files which are not receiving a social work response include:

A 10-year-old who is self-harming and expressing suicidal thoughts. This child is also very aggressive towards other children and the mother appears unable to cope.

A young teenager who is being neglected and has been found in the company of older men, with concerns she may be sexually abused.

A boy with apparent mental health problems whose behaviour is eccentric and whose mother is not responding to appointments with psychological or mental health services. His school has expressed serious concerns about him.

A 13-year-old girl who has not been to school for a number of years and whose mother is neglecting her and is unable to cope;

Four young children living in a house with very poor hygiene; they are believed to be neglected by their mother, who is unable to cope;

A teenager who has tried to kill himself and is at high risk because he has lost close friends to suicide in recent months;

A young boy who has been admitted to hospital on a number of occasions with head injuries which are likely to be linked to his aggressive mother. Other children in this family have been taken into care.

Social workers in several areas say they are under unprecedented strain. They say the number of cases being referred to social services has increased significantly over the past year, possibly due to high-profile child abuse cases in Roscommon and elsewhere. Latest figures show there are a record 6,128 children in the care system.

Many social work staff say they have continually voiced concerns to management over gaps in child protection services, but claim there has been little meaningful change on the ground.

In particular, they say they are only able to respond quickly to the most urgent “emergency” cases. As a result, less serious concerns are placed on waiting lists and often only receive a social work response months later or if they escalate into a more serious issue.

“Hundreds of these cases are not getting a response,” said one social worker, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“They are being added to growing waiting lists. No additional resources are being made available to deal with these backlogs. As a result, these children remain at risk.”

In a statement, the HSE said it was aware of gaps in services but pointed out that it has embarked on a three-year “change programme” to improve child and family services.

In addition, officials say significant additional resources are being targeted at the area. Two hundred social workers were recruited in 2010, in addition to the back-filling of 249 social work posts during the year. A further 60 social workers are currently being recruited.

“Given the scale of this programme of work and impact on existing services the transformation of child and family services will take considerable time, effort, perseverance and collaboration,” the HSE said in a statement.

However, several social workers say that despite new recruitment there is an unofficial embargo on hiring staff in place. Several sources say the hiring of staff to replace those on maternity leave or leaving the services have been blocked by the HSE’s human resources department in recent weeks.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0802/1224301718682.html

The Irish Times - Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Filling the gaps in child protection

THE CATHOLIC Church has been rightly criticised for its shocking failure to protect children or to follow child protection rules. But the State, too, has much to answer for in relation to the standard of care it is providing to children at risk.

As Carl O’Brien reports in today’s editions, a cursory examination of social work files reveals alarming gaps in services and a failure to respond to urgent reports of abuse or neglect. Hundreds of serious child protection reports are not being properly assessed or followed up. The result is that vulnerable young people remain at serious risk of abuse or mistreatment. Social work staff in many parts of the State say they are being forced to ignore these cases or simply to add them to waiting lists due to heavy workloads and under-staffing.

Many of these concerns have been raised before. However what stands out now is the previously undisclosed detail of the kinds of cases that are not receiving an appropriate response. They make for highly disturbing reading.

They include a young teenager who has not been to school for two years because her mother is neglectful and unable to cope; a young boy who has been admitted to hospital on numerous occasions with head injuries amid concerns that his mother is physically abusing him; a boy with serious mental health problems whose mother is refusing to attend appointments with specialists to get him help; and a 10-year-old child who is self-harming and expressing suicidal thoughts.

These cases and more like them demonstrate that a child protection system supposedly designed to protect the most vulnerable children is not responding in many cases to the needs of those at serious risk of abuse or neglect until it is too late.

This is not acceptable. If the church has a profound duty of care to young people, then the State’s responsibility is even greater. Under childcare legislation, social services have a legal duty to protect the care and welfare of vulnerable young people. The State is also, in effect, the parent of more than 6,000 children in the care system.

To their credit, both the Government and the Health Service Executive have been focusing on ways of improving services. There are plans to make the rules to protect children obligatory, instead of voluntary, and to establish a new child and family support agency.

But new laws and new nameplates will not be enough. What is more urgent is the requirement to change the culture of health and social services and to ensure that gaps of the kind that have existed until now are no longer tolerated. Social workers, too, may need to embrace new ways of working to help realise this vision.

As a society, we have learned in recent years of the appalling cost paid by young people when obstacles are placed in the way of their welfare. Yet a considerable distance remains to be travelled before those who are most vulnerable can be assured of access to high quality and professional services when they need them. The gaps involved must be closed.