It took Tusla more than six months to take any action in response to safeguarding risks identified for some children in Dublin’s north inner city, a review by the State’s health watchdog has found.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) said the overall child protection and welfare service provided was “not safe, adequate or timely”.
Hiqa’s inspection of the service noted significant delays in the screening of child protection and welfare referrals.
“For some children, over six months passed before any action was taken with regard to the safeguarding risk that had been identified,” it said.
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The service was found to be non-compliant in all five child-protection and welfare standards that were assessed.
The inspection was conducted by Hiqa last June as part of its monitoring of progress made to address non-compliances discovered at an inspection in May, 2024.
The inspection report, published on Tuesday, referenced a four-week screening wait in the case of a child and an allegation of physical abuse by a parent.
Safety planning did not occur for seven weeks in another case involving a child in care and alleged physical abuse, the review found. In a separate instance, a child with a disability who was non-verbal waited more than two months for completion of a preliminary inquiry and safety planning.
The report said some children were found to be on waiting lists without adequate safety planning in place, while other children’s cases were recorded as open and allocated to managers even though these cases were not being worked on.
Some children remained allocated to staff who were on extended statutory leave and received no contact from child protection and welfare staff, the review found.
“The capacity of the service to respond appropriately to all children was negatively impacted by the significant staff vacancies and staff capacity,” it said.
Hiqa said the screening of the majority of child-protection and welfare referrals for children was significantly delayed and, in some cases, it was six months before a referral was reviewed by a social worker. This meant the child-protection and welfare concerns that led to the referral “were not known” and immediate safeguarding action could not be undertaken if required, Hiqa said.
“Children allocated to a manager or those who were placed on the waiting list for assessment or support did not have any opportunity to communicate their views about the service. Therefore their views were not taken into consideration when decisions were made to allocate their case or keep their case on the waitlist for support.”
Of the 1,543 open cases at the end of last May, 373 referrals (a quarter) had not been screened.
Some children were allocated to workers who did not have experience or training in child protection and welfare. This led to “poor assessment of their safeguarding needs” and a failure by the service to take appropriate action, the review said.
