Agency to tackle gaps in child welfare

A NEW child and family support agency designed to give greater focus to State services for children will be established next January, according to the Minister for Children.

Frances Fitzgerald said the agency would bring a dedicated focus to child protection and family support issues for the first time in the history of the State. It would also be a major step in resolving the systemic issues identified in successive reports – most recently the independent review of the deaths of children while in State care.

She was speaking at the launch of the final report of the task force on the Child and Family Support Agency, which recommends that many services for children be moved from other bodies into a single, comprehensive, integrated and accountable agency.

The services involved include public health nursing, speech and language therapy, child mental health services and psychology services. The agency would also assume a role in social work and sexual violence services, as well as child detention services and probation services.

“When a child comes to the attention of social workers or an educational welfare office or a Garda diversion project, that child will come into a single system, a single continuum of services all focused on the child’s wellbeing,” Ms Fitzgerald said.

“It will take time for us to create that new reality out of the rubble of a system that has been crumbling for decades, but this report is a major step on the road.”

Maureen Lynott, chairwoman of the task force, criticised the existing “fragmented” delivery of services for children and said there was “diffuse” accountability.

The scale of failure, ranging up to the deaths of children in care, was disturbing. However, the problems were not the primary responsibility of social workers but were the result of a lack of communication and diluted accountability.

The agency offered a once-in-a- generation opportunity to make changes that could improve the circumstances of children, Ms Lynott added.

The Impact trade union welcomed the commitment to establish a dedicated agency for child welfare. However its assistant general secretary Christina Carney warned that adequate resources were required to ensure services were maintained and improved.

She said there were fewer social workers in child protection than at the time of the Ryan report in 2009, yet demand for such services was increasing because of the recession. A further increase in demand was likely when statutory reporting of child abuse came on stream.

Fianna Fáil spokesman on children Robert Troy welcomed the plans for the new agency but said its success would be dependent on the resources given to it and the extent to which the Minister was accountable for its work.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said the new agency “marks a huge step forward from a position where child and family welfare was barely a priority to a position where children and families will be the sole focus of a single dedicated State agency, overseen by a single dedicated Government department”.