Legal services in childcare cases cost HSE €18m in 2011

EXPENDITURE BY the Health Service Executive on legal services related to childcare cases was more than €18 million last year, the director designate of the new Child and Family Support Agency has said.

Speaking following the launch of the annual report of children’s charity Cari, Gordon Jeyes said the fees included solicitors, counsel and ad-litem guardian costs and made up more than €18 million out of total legal expenditure for the Health Service Executive of €25 million.

“It is expenditure some of which could be spent on front-line services,” he said.

He said because of “some real and some perceived lack of credibility” around childcare services, there had been an increase in “court processes and legal involvement to an unnecessary and sometimes unhelpful extent”.

“Of course children and parents need representation but we seem to have got into a situation where legal argument is enjoyed and it is approached in an adversarial manner when it is not adversarial. There is no right and wrong: there are judgments made in a child’s best interests,” he said.

Launching the charity’s annual report, Mr Jeyes said the new agency could learn from Cari and other voluntary bodies.

The charity’s report for 2011 said a helpline for parents, carers and professionals working with children received more than 340 calls about abuse by a person not a family member but acquainted with a child, a 40 per cent increase on 2010.

Combined with almost 400 calls relating to abuse within the family, the figures showed “a child is most at risk within their own circle of family, friends and neighbours”.

Another primary concern among callers was sexualised behaviour in children. More than 200 callers raised the issue, a 57 per cent increase on 2010 figures.

The report said in the past a child presenting with sexualised behaviour was likely to have experienced sexual abuse but this was no longer the case. Children now had access to “a dizzying array of inappropriate material”, it said.

Chief executive Mary Flaherty said in 12 years of her leading the organisation “there has never been a better strategic environment” around dealing with child sexual abuse but at the same time the resources “have turned completely in the other direction”.

She highlighted the closure of Cari’s outreach service in Cork due to financial cuts and said there needed to be exemptions from “indiscriminate universal cuts”.