asked the Minister for Health if he will list the progress made by the Government in the implementation of the interim and final reports of the Task Force on Child Care Services; their intentions in this matter; and if he will detail the public funds specifically devoted to these purposes.
Written Answers. - Task Force on Child Care Services.
378.
Many of the recommendations in the task force reports require legislative change, much of which will be provided for in a new Children's Bill which I will be introducing in the House later this year. This Bill is now at a very advanced stage of preparation. Meanwhile, the Government are proceeding with their policy of centralising statutory and administrative responsibility for child care services in my Department. The detailed aspects of progress arising from the reports are somewhat lengthy and I propose, with the Ceann Comhairle's permission, to circulate the information in the Official Report. They include a number of projects for which the Minister for Education is responsible. Total public capital expenditure on all these developments has been £4.5m. and estimated revenue expenditure in the current year as £3.5m.
Following is the information referred to:
Progress Report Relating to Implementation of Recommendations Contained in the Task Force Report.
Adoption
1. Responsibility for adoption has been transferred from the Minister for Justice to the Minister for Health. The working party set up in April 1983 to examine laws and practice in relation to adoption is due to report shortly.
Residential Care
2. Following transfer of responsibility for industrial schools from the Minister for Education, the Minister for Health has assumed full statutory responsibility for all children's homes. These homes are now funded directly by the local health boards who are in discussion with them as to future reorganisation of residential services broadly along the lines recommended by the Task Force.
3. St. Joseph's, Clonmel, has been developed as a special school catering for 60 boys, and the former building replaced.
4. A special school, with secure provision, has been established at Trinity House, Lusk, to cater for 30 boys, aged from 12-14 years, who are committed by the courts and cannot be coped with in other residential institutions.
5. A remand and assessment unit catering for ten girls will open in Dublin in June of this year.
Foster Care
6. A new scheme for the recruitment and training of foster parents has been introduced by the health boards.
Day Care
7. Public expenditure on assistance to centres for pre-school children has increased almost threefold over the period 1981-1984, from £400,000 to an estimated £1.1m. in 1984. The new Children Bill will provide for the regulation and control of all day care centres, including those wholly funded from private sources, and in anticipation of this the Minister for Health established a Working Party last July to examine the minimum legal requirements and standards to apply to these centres. Their report is expected shortly.
Community Projects
8. Two Neighbourhood Youth Projects funded by health boards have been in operation since 1978 when they were first introduced, in Cork and Limerick, on a pilot basis. There is also a variant on this model in operation in the Dublin Inner City area.
9. There is a Family Resource Centre annually in operation in the Southern Health Board area and planning is at an advanced stage for the establishment of another such project, on a pilot basis, in the Eastern Health Board area.
Projects for Travelling Children
10. Residential accommodation has been provided for travelling children — a centre for boys and a centre, which is due to open soon, for girls — in Co. Wicklow. A resource centre with residential accommodation is in operation in the Dublin area and a number of pre-schools have been established in Dublin and in various centres throughout the country.
379.
asked the Minister for Health his intentions with regard to the implementation of the Task Force on Child Care Services recommendation, regarding the development of neighbourhood resource centre; and the measures he has taken in this regard.
This recommendation represents a relatively new concept in the context of Irish personal social services. Indeed the task force itself envisaged a certain flexibility as to the structure and format such centres should take depending on the special needs of individual areas. Consequently the approach being adopted in the development of these centres is to establish specific projects on a pilot basis in a small number of selected areas which will both test and evaluate the practical application of the concept. There is one such centre currently in operation in the Southern Health Board area and planning is now at an advanced stage for the establishment of another pilot project in the Eastern Health Board.