A NATIONAL child care authority should be set up to co ordinate services for children, according to a new report.
Published yesterday by Focus Ireland, the report says that some children become homeless because they fall between the various government departments and agencies responsible for child services.
Focus on Residential Child Care in Ireland says that a recommendation made 25 years ago in the Kennedy Report that one department should be made responsible for services to children has been consistently ignored by governments.
Focus Ireland was set up by Sister Stanislaus Kennedy to develop policy on homelessness.
"Residential child care has a negative connotation in our society of the present time as we rightly begin to acknowledge the allegations and instances of abuse of children in care," Sister Stanislaus said.
It is now time to take a long hard look at the system we have today and make sure that it will not produce the nightmares of tomorrow.
The Kennedy Report, named after its chairwoman, Justice Eileen Kennedy, provided a crucial impetus for the closure of the old style reformatories and large children's homes. They were to be replaced by family type group homes, but this development was hampered by restrictions on spending. Instead, the use of fostering escalated.
About 3,000 children are in care, roughly the same number as 25 years ago. But while 78 per cent were in residential care at that time, 75 per cent are now in foster care.
The care system, says the report, "is now dealing with a totally different type of child older, more damaged and more difficult. All of these children come from families which are under stress.
"There are also numbers of children who do not receive any care, either because they do not fit into defined categories or they are considered out of control, and residential homes do not have the skill or resources to look after them. Many of these children now make up the `new homeless' in our towns and cities."
There are examples of children who, for minor offences, have been criminalised by the courts simply as a way to force the system to provide care for them.
The primary task of the national child care authority, said Sister Stanislaus, would be to produce a national policy framework on residential child care.
"Successive governments have created departments for issues that are considered important," she said. "Nothing could be more important than the care of our children."