A NALYSIS:Hiding the failures is not the answer. Greater openness would strengthen arguments about under-resourced services with regard to the care of children
LAST APRIL the Health Service Executive published two reports into the deaths of teenagers who died in State care. The reports were heavily edited, but their findings were clear.
David Foley (17) and Tracey Fay (18) had been failed by a social services system charged with protecting their safety and welfare.
The reports exposed the fault-lines of a social work system that was too often “fragmented and disjointed”; instead of structure and stability there was chaos and poor management; successive opportunities to intervene and help change the course of their rough and tumble lives were missed.
Senior officials said at the publication of the reports that their contents were being put in the public domain to ensure there was “absolute transparency” over the services provided to young people in its care.
There was no suggestion that the reports were being suppressed, officials said. The HSE had a policy of full disclosure and anything edited out of the reports was for legal or family reasons.
Newly released internal documents, however, paint a much different picture.
In April last year one of its most senior officials told Minister for Children Barry Andrews there were “no plans to publish” the David Foley report. The case review was aimed at identifying what, if any, lessons could be learned; it was never envisaged that the report in its entirety would ever be published, the official added.
In relation to the Tracey Fay report, the official said it was not planning to publish this report either. It had received legal advice to say it should not be put in the public domain. It compromised the young woman’s children and other individuals involved in the case.
It assured the Minister, however, that recommendations from the reports – aimed at policy, practice and management of childcare services – were being acted upon.
In the meantime, the HSE had launched an "urgent investigation" into leaks of the report which were published in The Irish Times. It was examining its computer systems and had launched an internal audit into the leaking of the information.
That is where matters may well have rested. But internal records indicate the reports into the teenagers’ deaths were eventually published a year later following political pressure from an exasperated Minister’s office.
The findings are disturbing, but not surprising. The reluctance of the HSE to publish these reports is part of a wider culture of excessive secrecy and unwillingness to confront failure at a senior level within the service.
Take, for example, the HSE’s annual report on social work services, the Review of Adequacy of Child and Family Services, also known as the “section 8” report.
It is obliged to produce this under statute. The raw material for the annual report includes regional dossiers compiled by childcare managers in local health offices across the State.
Many of these unpublished reports make for shocking reading. They point to “dangerous” numbers of children waiting to be allocated social workers, or “unsustainable” strains on child protection services. When the actual annual report is eventually published, these comments are generally edited or censored out.
The published version contains general statistics and examples of good practice – but criticism by the HSE’s own employees is almost entirely absent.
More recently, the HSE said it was unable to hand over files on children who died while in care to a review group set up by the Minister for Children.
The executive said that due to the in camera rule, it could not hand over the files. But commentators like Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly pointed out that it was possible to legitimately circumvent these obstacles where the public interest demanded it.
There’s no doubt there are many social workers who do their best in a chaotic and under-resourced system.
But all too often senior HSE management adopt an overtly legalistic and defensive approach to the issues regarding the care of children.
The irony is that hiding these failures regarding the under-resourcing of services ultimately damages social services.
Greater openness should not be something to be feared.
Reports into failings of social services should not be hidden. Instead, everyone involved in the lives of these children – schools, public health, children’s mental health, youth justice and child welfare – should be learning from their deaths.
Greater openness would only serve to strengthen arguments over, for example, putting more emphasis on resourcing family support and other early intervention services. It would also ease the burden on over-worked social workers who strive to do their best in near impossible situations.
The alternative is that inadequate and under-funded social services limp along – and children at risk of abuse or neglect are left to pay the steepest price of all.