THE DEATH of any child who has been placed in the care of the State for their own protection should be cause for alarm. But the fact that 20 such children have died over a six-year period should prompt, at the very least, a fundamental review into whether our care system is able to protect the most vulnerable of our young citizens.
Official figures released by the Health Service Executive this week show that five young people in care died from drug overdoses, two from traffic accidents, two from assaults and two from suicide between 2000 and 2006. A further nine died from what health officials describe as “medical issues”. No further details or explanation of these deaths were provided.
It is important to point out these cases are the exception. About 5,300 children are in State care at any one time, the majority of whom are placed with foster families. For thousands of children, the care system has provided valuable support and protection which they were unable to receive among their own families.
What is most alarming, however, is that a very large proportion of deaths involve children who were admitted into emergency care hostels, or the “out of hours” system. This service was devised to provide short-term accommodation for young people at risk until more suitable accommodation could be found. In practice, it means children are left to roam the streets during the day, exposing them to a brutal and dangerous culture of drug abuse, prostitution or crime.
Social workers on the frontline of this service say too many young lives have been lost in instances where they could have been better cared for in a more structured and supportive environment. We know some of their names. There is Kim O’Donovan, a 15-year-old girl who was found dead at a city centre BB from a suspected drugs overdose; David Foley, a 17-year-old who died from an overdose three years after voluntarily seeking care from the State; and 18-year-old Tracey Fay, who was found dead after injecting herself in 2002.
We know their names because their deaths were the subject of internal investigations or reports, none of which has been formally published. But there are other children we do not know about, who were quietly failed by a system designed to protect and care for them, and whose deaths have never been investigated.
If we are to learn anything from the mistakes of the past, then we need to heed the calls of people like the Ombudsman for Children who is seeking automatic reviews or investigations into child deaths. We need uniform application of our civil child protection laws and guidelines throughout the State. And we also need a properly resourced family support system which intervenes earlier in the lives of children and families at risk, instead of waiting for them to escalate into crisis.
Successive governments have failed to ensure the proper workings and application of child protection laws and services. And too many young lives have been needlessly lost in situations where they could have been provided with greater levels of support. How many more children must die before we see meaningful action?