Vol. 503 No. 5
13 Mr. Stagg asked the Minister for Health and Children the progress, if any, to date in establishing a pilot project to remove children from residential detention and provide them with foster care in view of his post budget announcement; the amount of money allocated to this project; when the results of the pilot project will be available; if he will extend this project nationwide; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10564/99]
I have established a steering group with representatives from the Departments of Health and Children, Education and Science and Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Irish Foster Care Association to set up and monitor a pilot project for an alternative remand service. The project will examine the feasibility of providing special non-institutional placements for children and young persons who, but for the availability of such placements, would be remanded by the courts to St. Michael's Remand and Assessment Unit. I have allocated £200,000 for this project this year. When the pilot project has been established it will be evaluated with a view to identifying the feasibility of establishing a national alternative remand service. The group is currently finalising the protocol for the study. This project is one of a number of projects I have initiated to strengthen community services, support vulnerable children and their families in the community and tackle the problems of social exclusion experienced by these families.
We all accept that progress has been slow in increasing the number of available foster families. Is the Minister aware that a serious problem for foster families is the enormous difficulty they face in getting funding for anything out of the ordinary? They receive the normal fostering allowance but what if a child needs something special for school or wants to go on a school trip? If foster parents want to get even £50 extra for some special need they must go through a long process with the health board and it takes a long time for the money to come through. We hear that complaint from many foster parents. Is the Minister aware of the problem and what steps is he taking to deal with it?
The most positive work done in the child care section of our Department is in the area of foster care. We have significantly increased the weekly allocation to foster parents. We gave a once-off payment of £100 for every child in foster care at Christmas. We put an end to much of the bad practice that existed prior to us taking over in Government. The specific issue the Deputy mentioned was one of the first I tackled. A mountain of paperwork had to be gone through for every item a foster parent had to purchase. I set up a working group to deal with a series of foster care issues and I told the group I wanted a change implemented in this area. That has been done and money will be made available to foster parents with the quantum of costs agreed on a national basis. That will put an end to the bureaucratic system of submitting invoices and more money being spent on making the payment than the actual payment. We have addressed that and other issues. This is a novel idea in that 70 per cent of children locked up in St. Michael's remand centre are inappropriately placed and should not be there. Many were committed through the courts as there was no other mechanism. This is a national scandal.
This project will enable us to take quite a number of those children out of secure residential care and place them in foster care and provide them with intensive day care support while on remand. This will include education and therapy and, hopefully, move them on to a continuum of care which will get them back into mainstream society and out of their difficult situations.
I agree that this is a national scandal. However, would the Minister of State agree that devoting £200,000 to tackling this scandal is wholly deficient? The High Court and judges in other courts are constantly pointing out that we are short 155 high-support places for children who should be off the streets. The Minister of State said that he could take some people out of St. Michael's House. By any calculation one would need to spend an additional £7 million to £8 million to address this problem. How can the Minister of State hope to make an impact by spending £200,000? It is insulting to suggest that one is confronting a national scandal with the scale of operations envisaged by the Minister of State.
The Deputy is confusing two separate issues. The issue he raised is being dealt with in a different way. We are spending about £13.5 million this year and next year on units to deal with the children to which he referred. We received an additional £4 million in the budget across the Departments of Health and Children, Education and Science and Justice, Equality and Law Reform to deal with the problems of children and young people in secure accommodation. We want to try to stop them going into such accommodation and get children who are already there out more quickly. This is one small element of that £4 million expenditure.
We are also involved in similar projects with other institutions. This will result in preventing a considerable number of people from entering secure accommodation at a cost of up to £70,000 per year.
Can the Minister of State assure the House that we will no longer hear judges stating that we need more places?
Written Answers follow Adjournment Debate
