About 30% of children in care cases come from minorities

Parental substance abuse and parental disability are the most common reasons the State takes children into care, a landmark report on childcare legal proceedings finds.

The final report from the Child Care Law Reporting (CCLR) Project also finds a quarter of the children taken into care have “special needs” of their own – physical, educational or psychological – with 19 per cent of the children having special psychological needs.

Children from ethnic minorities, including Travellers, are about seven times more likely to be subject to care proceedings than other white Irish children.

Dr Carol Coulter’s report, published this morning, covers the duration of the CCLR project, from December 2012 to July 2015, and captures 1,272 childcare cases.

Of these, 1,194 were before the 26 district courts and 78 before the High Court. They represent about 30 per cent of the childcare cases before the courts in the 30-month period.

A care order was rarely sought for just one reason, according to the report, and although the stated reason in court may be neglect or abuse of the child, when a parent’s problem, such a disability or addiction, was presented as “serious factors in the case”, the report notes these.

“Parental disability emerges as a major factor in one in six cases. The vast majority of these involved cognitive disability or mental health, and sometimes both. Drug and alcohol abuse feature in one in five cases. In recent months, the issue of homelessness has cropped up with increasing frequency, but this is never the sole reason for the application being made.”

Ethnic minority

A disproportionate number of the families had at least one parent from an ethnic minority, including Irish Travellers, who accounted for 4 per cent. This is, according to the authors, “almost certainly an underestimation”, as the ethnicity of settled Travellers was not recorded if not given in the case. Given that Travellers account for 0.6 per cent of the population they are “significantly overrepresented in the childcare courts”.

Excluding Travellers, some 27 per cent of respondents included at least one parent from an ethnic minority. Africans accounted for 8 per cent and Europeans (mainly eastern European) accounted for 5 per cent, not including Roma, who made up 1.4 per cent of cases.

Three types of problems arose frequently for African children: abandoned or unaccompanied minors, mother’s mental health difficulties (especially if she has spent extended periods in direct provision as an asylum seeker), and physical chastisement.

Eastern European parents frequently had problems with alcohol abuse and mental health. Among Irish Travellers alcohol abuse, domestic violence and allegations of sexual abuse featured regularly.

The report notes international studies show certain ethnic minorities are overrepresented in childcare proceedings in many countries.

Cultural differences

“These groups are also overrepresented among lone-parent families, and families suffering economic and social deprivation, issues closely linked to child-protection concerns. It is unlikely that

Ireland

is different in this respect,” the report notes.

Cultural differences also play a role. “In both African and some Asian families there is more emphasis on parental authority, sometimes maintained through physical chastisement, than is now acceptable in Irish society.”

In few of the cases where mothers had mental health problems was evidence given of supports offered to the mother, or the extent to which the children’s needs were considered by mental health services.

In the significant proportion of cases where parents had a cognitive disability, diagnosis of the disability appeared “haphazard”, with decisions apparently taken to seek a care order simply because the parent has a cognitive disability, rather than assessing whether the parent, with support, could parent the child.

“What many of these cases highlight is the lack of . . . suitable and appropriate services for vulnerable parents,” the report says.

“Parents with mental health problems, cognitive disabilities, from minority ethnic groups, parents who are or who have recently been in care themselves, parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol, parents struggling with a child with mental health problems, all require appropriate and targeted support services.

“Again and again questions were raised about the availability of such services.”