Vol. 510 No. 5
12 Ms Shortall asked the Minister for Health and Children his views on the proportion of funds allocated by health boards to family support and problem prevention; the plans, if any, he has to target this specific area in the coming budget; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22865/99]
The allocation of funds is primarily a matter for the health boards to make in accordance with priorities that they have identified. The Government has already allocated an extra £8 million in 1998 and £15 million in 1999 in revenue towards the further development of child care and family support services. The Deputy will be aware that she will have to await the Minister for Finance's Budget Statement for announcements in the forthcoming budget.
The Government's commitment to the further development of child care and family support and problem prevention services has been demonstrated by the wide range of initiatives, which have been undertaken in the past two years. These include the Springboard Initiative, which is being funded from the Young People's Facilities and Services Fund at a cost of £7.2 million over three years. These projects are designed to strengthen the co-ordination and co-operation between statutory and voluntary agencies in providing services for vulnerable children and their families. I have also established teenage parenting support projects in Limerick, Galway and Dublin to identify single young mothers who are considered to be in need of support services, through pregnancy and beyond, for them and their children.
It is generally agreed that where a child has to be cared for outside his or her own home that, where possible, he or she should be cared for in another family. Last year, I established a working group on foster care to examine all aspects of foster care so as to ensure the further development of this type of care. Membership of the group is made up of nominees from my Department, the health boards, the Irish Foster Care Association and a foster parent. The working group will report to me early in the new year.
The Deputy will also be aware that health boards provide financial supports to certain pre-school services which cater for children who are regarded as being at-risk or disadvantaged. This function is in keeping with the boards overall responsibilities under the 1991 Act in regard to the promotion of the welfare of children and provision of family support services. Approximately £3.26 million funding is being provided by the health boards towards the service in 1999, and approximately 7,000 places are currently funded.
Additional Information.
In addition, the Government recently published the Children Bill. While this mainly deals with issues concerning juvenile justice, it also provides a statutory basis for the provision of services for children with behavioural difficulties. It provides for the establishment of family welfare conference, which health boards will be obliged to convene, where a child in its area may require special care or protection. The conference will provide a system for the early identification of children at risk and a means of providing support and assistance for the child and his or her family through inter-agency intervention.
A Social Services Inspectorate was recently established. The inspectorate initially will concentrate on the child care area, but in the longer term its remit will extend to all the social services. The main function of the inspectorate is to support the child care services by promoting and ensuring the development of quality standards in the personal social services. Also, the appointment of an ombudsman for children has been identified as a priority and will be a crucial mechanism in vindicating children's rights here. The Government recognises the importance of establishing this mechanism to vindicate the rights of children, as provided for in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it intends to introduce such a mechanism.
All of these initiatives underline the Government's continuing commitment to the development of child care and family support services. To strengthen the co-ordination of these services, the Government has decided to develop a national children's strategy to position child and youth related issues more centrally and more explicitly in public policy development and decision-making in a more co-ordinated way. The strategy will also seek to build on the efforts of statutory and voluntary and community agencies in a renewed commitment to develop more child focused services. It will address the needs of children and young people up to the age of 18, with special regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is intended to publish the strategy next year.
In the meantime to improve cross departmental co-operation on child care issues, a team, drawn from the Departments of Social Community and Family Affairs, Education and Science and Justice, Equality and Law Reform under the direction of a principal officer from my Department, has been established.
Rather than concentrating on individual initiatives and various pilot programmes, will the Minister of State accept that we need to discuss the overall spending trends? Will he give his views on figures released to me recently showing a breakdown of spending in each health board area? The maximum spent in any health board in the area of prevention is 20 per cent of overall funding, which dropped to as low as 8 per cent in the Southern Health Board. Does he accept health boards are given very little discretion in terms of spending on children's services, having regard to the urgency of the child welfare and protection service. A health board does not have the luxury of being able to decide it will spend money on prevention work rather than giving it to social workers to help reduce the lengthening waiting lists for services. Health boards do not have much discretion in terms of such spending, and yet they must provide fire brigade emergency services. They require substantial additional funding, if they are to make an impact in the prevention and family support area. Will the Minister of State indicate his intentions in the spread of funding between emergency and prevention services, what spread would he like to achieve and how much would he like to increase funding for the family and child support area?
I accept that the health boards do not have sufficient discretion because, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, there is a pressing need for investigative work and to deal with the continuing crisis, but there has been considerable improvement in this area. While I accept the figure of 20 per cent is correct, additional moneys provided over the past two years have gone mainly into the areas of problem prevention and intervention. We specifically asked the health boards, in last year's service plans, to outline their initiatives for intervention and problem prevention. We got a number of very worthwhile proposals and we have developed a number of best practice models of problem prevention and intervention in every health board area.
As the correct balance between prevention and treating the problem is about 50:50, considerably more resources will have to be allocated to the prevention area. At present, there is a major drive right across the health boards – these initiatives are not only pilot projects – with a number of Departments involved with the Cabinet Subcommittee on Social Inclusion and Drugs, to put money into early intervention, family support and a range of initiatives to try to prevent problems rather than trying to cure them. I am satisfied we are moving in the right direction. The interagency response now adopted to this problem was not adopted in the past. Money is being provided for these areas and I look forward to further good news in the new few weeks.
Written Answers follow Adjournment Debate.
