AN INDEPENDENT report into the deaths of children in care is understood to reveal significant and repeated failures by State authorities to adequately protect the welfare of 115 vulnerable children who died over a 10-year period.
The report, due to be published in the coming weeks, will provide the first definitive account of how the State interacted with these children and the extent to which they were cared for or failed by the State.
It is expected to call for independent inquiries into a number of cases where there were major failures or where authorities were unable to produce sufficient documentation on how cases were handled.
The scale of the State’s failure in many cases may raise the spectre of potential legal actions by some families against authorities over the handling of individual cases.
Officials with knowledge of the report’s findings say many cases show a repeated lack of co-operation and communication between different agencies responsible for providing services to children at risk. Poor management and lack of follow-through on identified needs are also issues, along with lack of standardised methods to assess the needs of children and young people.
The independent review group is composed of Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy with Barnardos, and Geoffrey Shannon, a solicitor and specialist in child law. Both were unavailable for comment yesterday, but Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald said the findings were “harrowing” and would be published as soon as the report got legal clearance.
The group spoke with some family members and advocates. Among them were the parents of Devlin Kavanagh (14), who died in 2006. He was due to be admitted to a secure care unit in Dublin for his own safety after a High Court order in December 2006. However, gardaí failed to execute the order and he took his own life five days later.
His mother, Orla Kavanagh, and stepfather, Mark Doyle, say they feel let down by the State. “In our case, we went to the State looking for help. We were crying out for help, but it never arrived . . . we still wonder how things might have turned out differently,” Mr Doyle said yesterday.
“The failures in his case were repeated. And as far as I can see, they are still being repeated.”
