Vol. 760 No. 2
2Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the total number of Health Service Executive social workers that are now employed in view of the 45 retirements during February; if she will give a commitment that these 45 social worker posts will be replaced in addition to the extra 260 that she had already committed to creating; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15956/12]
The HSE compiles a monthly census of employment in the public health and social care sector. The latest data available is in respect of January 2012. This shows that the total number of social workers employed in the HSE and in directly funded agencies was 2,435 whole time equivalents, WTEs. The impact of recent retirements will be more fully reflected in future monthly employment returns. The latest information from the HSE in respect of the number of social work staff who retired in February indicates that 31 social work staff retired. That is the most up-to-date figure, not the 45 mentioned in the Deputy's question. It refers to the end of January, so the figure I gave does not necessarily mean there were 31. Clearly, there is a great deal of movement at present in terms of recruitment of new social workers as well as the retirement of other social workers.
The HSE is actively reviewing the impact of recent retirements at national and regional level. The national director of children and family services, Gordon Jeyes, will apply his discretion over the course of the year to the filling of vacancies, having regard to identified need and subject to services being delivered within available resources. The HSE has in place an agreed service plan for 2012 and the challenge is to ensure full delivery of the range of commitments set out in that plan.
I am very much aware of the financial and service challenges facing the HSE in 2012. The Deputy will be aware of the budgetary challenges we had to meet last year. The challenges are such as to require acceleration of the reform programme across child and family services, leading to the establishment of a new and dedicated children and family support agency, to which the Government is fully committed.
Additional information not given on the floor of the House.
The Government has made additional budgeting provision of €19 million for child welfare and protection services compared to the funding made available last year. This compares to a reduction of €14 million which was made in the HSE's 2011 national service plan which was approved in December 2010. The additional funding made available for 2012 provides further impetus to the comprehensive reform of service delivery which is under way and which is aimed at generating the best possible outcomes for vulnerable children and families.
My Department will be working very closely with the HSE throughout the year to ensure the priorities set out in the HSE national service plan are implemented where they relate to children and family services. We have set an ambitious programme of work, one which is designed to strengthen significantly the policy, legislative and practice framework. Our shared goal is the delivery of appropriate, effective and consistent services, notwithstanding the very challenging and demanding circumstances in which these services are delivered.
I do not wish to be critical but the information is not as up to date as I hoped. It is now the end of March and the key date was 29 February in the context of the departure of staff under the incentivised pension arrangements or however one wishes to describe it. The figure is 31 and relates only to the end of January. My question suggests, from the information I have gleaned, that there were 45 departures in February and not just up to February. Does the Minister understand it to mean up to February?
Yes, 31 had retired by the end of February. I will clarify it for the Deputy. The figures are for the period up to the end of January. Of the 31, some might well have retired before February. Those figures are still being compiled. The Deputy should accept that there is a fair amount of movement at present. I will come back to him as soon as I have the full figures. The figure is 31 at present.
Yes. We will not pull this from both ends like a Christmas cracker. I would appreciate if the Minister reverted back to us with clarification as soon as possible, not just for myself but for my colleague Deputies who are directly interested in this. It is very important. The core point of this and previous questions on this issue is a concern about the number of social workers, particularly when they are needed more than at any time in our political experience. I am deeply concerned. As a Deputy at the coalface people are presenting as never before, not even during the worst times of the 1980s. Today there is a huge rise in the real need and social workers have a crucial role to play in that. I am deeply concerned that we are not in a position to respond properly to the problems.
There is a high number of retirements. I hear the Minister for Health respond that they are in a certain age cohort but the fact is that they are not being replaced. These are positions lost. They represent hands and heads that are no longer within the service. How will this impact on the establishment of the new family support agency? One would expect there would be increased provision, commensurate with the work and undertaking of that agency. Are there any plans or contingency plans for coping as we move towards the establishment of that new body?
I wish to make a number of points. A total of 262 extra social workers were recruited last year and the year before. It is, effectively, a 25% increase in the number of social workers dealing with child care, protection and welfare. If 25% more social workers were recruited in the child protection area prior to the retirements, it is important to acknowledge that. One can make the assumption, given the work rate of social workers, that even with the increased demand that clearly exists there is increased capacity to respond.
The Deputy says these people will not be replaced, but that is not correct. There is no moratorium on recruitment for social work positions. Gordon Jeyes has the authority to replace these positions as resources allow. Of course, the management of resources will be a key issue over the year given the various demands on the services. Where he sees the need to replace positions where vacancies occur, he has the authority to do that and to keep the teams at the right level to ensure the needs of the families presenting, and particularly the children who might be at risk, can be met and that those cases can be allocated.
I am aware of the figures the Minister shared previously regarding the extra number recruited. However, the real comparison that must be made at this point is between the level of social work numbers, WTEs, as against the number in previous years. Is there a 25% increase in the actual numbers altogether, apart from the recruitment, given the departures and retirements up to 29 February? What is the real position now in the last week of March? These are valid and reasonable questions. Gordon Jeyes might have the authority to replace workers, but only within the confines of the budget provided. It is not the case that he can simply add numbers. He must thereby subtract numbers in some other way.
The number of social workers has increased in each of the years 2009 to 2010, inclusive. The other point is that while obviously numbers are important, how one organises the services is equally important. There is a reform programme under way. I can give an example. Some of the social workers who previously worked in adoption, an area where there is a changing scenario, will be reallocated to work in areas where there is a higher priority.
The other point is that we managed to achieve an extra €19 million for the area of child welfare and protection. There was a reduction of €14 million in the previous year. Despite the difficult financial situation there has been an increase of €19 million for those services. In terms of the director having an opportunity to use those finances to reach out in an appropriate way, perhaps through family support services, this must be taken into account as well as the numbers. The numbers are important and they have increased. I will refer back to the Deputy with the precise figures. The number for those who have retired is down from 45 to 31 and there has also been the recruitment of an extra 25% in the child and family area. There are positive developments in this area, and it is important not to mislead the House by not pointing to some of the positive actions that have been taken.
The Deputy refers to issues relating to records created prior to, and post, the introduction of the statutory regime for adoption in Ireland in the Adoption Act 1952. Therefore, for clarity and to provide the Deputy with as much information as I can, I will deal with both questions separately.
Prior to 1952, there was no statutory regime for adoption as we now understand it. Children were placed in foster care under the Children Act 1908 on an informal basis and may also have been placed privately. Fostering and adoption were not legally differentiated, which led to a number of long-term foster care placements becoming what are now called de facto adoptions. Records relating to these cases are likely to be held in a variety of institutions, including the precursors to health boards and a variety of other private, community and religious institutions involved in providing such services at that time.
It is anticipated that records relating to some of these de facto adoptions were retained by those bodies on the introduction of the statutory regimes for both adoption and fostering, which came into effect in 1953. Therefore, it is possible that some of these records are retained by the HSE, former adoption societies or newly accredited bodies under the Adoption Act 2010.
From the information available to me, it is likely that during the period prior to the introduction of the Adoption Act 1952, private arrangements were entered into where the adoption or fostering arrangement was not recorded and, in fact, some such births were falsely registered in which the "adoptive" parents were registered as the biological parents of the child on the birth certificate. In this case, there may be no records of such arrangements and no way of identifying the possible existence of such records.
There are no provisions regarding the retention and preservation of such records in current legislation and the Adoption Authority has no remit in respect of such matters. Notwithstanding the legal and practical difference between such records and those relating to adoptions under the Adoption Acts, I am extremely conscious that these differences are of limited significance to the individuals involved whose concern is with their personal identity. Therefore, it is a matter which I am actively considering in the context of more general provisions in respect of the adoption (information and tracing) legislation which is currently being developed in my Department.
I will deal with the post-1952 situation in a supplementary reply.
I thank the Minister for her reply. As she outlined, this is a hugely important issue for thousands of people, many of whom, as has been acknowledged, were falsely registered or not registered. Meanwhile, records are dotted all over the State which many people cannot access. What steps can the Minister take to safeguard those records? That is the essential question. The Minister herself has admitted that the State has failed these people, but we must see what we can do about it now. For example, I am aware of a record that exists within a 5 km radius of this House which would give indispensable proof to a person who is trying to identify her mother and therefore establish with certainty her own identity. She cannot get those records, however, because they are privately owned and she is fearful for their safety.
There is an onus on the Government to come up with proposals to deal with this situation, if not on a voluntary basis then to seize these records where they exist. This should be done because it was the State which let these people down originally.
The Deputy quoted a figure of thousands pre-1952, but we must be careful of the numbers involved. The Adoption Board had 99 people coming forward who believed they were adopted, yet records could not be found. While that is the number of people who have come forward, I take the point that there may well be others who have not made themselves known to the Adoption Authority. Some 50% of those were pre-1952, while the other half were post-1952.
I want to assure the Deputy that the Adoption Act 2010 provides for the safeguarding of records and files held by each accredited body. In addition, each accredited body shall record and preserve all information supplied which relates to the child, including family and medical histories.
Adoption records held by all the former adoption societies which have not sought registration under the Adoption Act 2010 are in the process of being transferred to an accredited body or the HSE in order to provide for their safeguarding in accordance with the provisions of the Act. I do not know if that is the situation that applies to the particular case mentioned by the Deputy. If it could be helpful, I would be happy to respond to a particular case if the Deputy wishes to bring it to my attention. Many records of private institutions which did not seek to be re-registered, will be transferred, kept in a safe place and will be accessible. The HSE has been co-operating fully with all such requests for the transfer of records. The Adoption Authority has oversight of those matters.
There is a separate question of illegal birth registration, which is a different subject.
The problem is that not all bodies are accredited and we do not know about many of the files that are out there. I am also aware of consistent backlogs with the HSE's cumbersome approach to try to amalgamate these records and bring them under one roof. We must go out of our way, using either the voluntary route or by legally compelling the centralisation of these records. They should be lodged, photocopied and kept in the National Archives so that they can be accessed by people from all over the world. We are a long way from that but I will probably have to resubmit the question for further discussion at a future date.
I agree with the Deputy abut the importance of this issue. I completely share her views on the question of access to identity and having as much information as possible. We must have the strongest possible legislation to deal with this issue, although there are some constitutional challenges surrounding that.
I want to make it clear, however, that if there are bodies out there holding private information on adoption, that material can be transferred to the HSE which will take charge of it. The HSE will preserve it and the Adoption Authority will have oversight. Those records will be kept in a safe place.
If nobody comes forward who has those records, clearly that is a difficulty. It may be that in the forthcoming tracing legislation we can find a way of addressing some of those aspects. I am in discussions with the Attorney General about how this area could be incorporated into the tracing Bill.
The HSE, which has statutory responsibility for child welfare and protection, is in the process of finalising a national audit of child protection policies, procedures and practices in each Catholic diocese. There are essentially two elements to the audit: first, a retrospective aspect which examines how each diocese responded to allegations of child sexual abuse in the past and, second, a forward-looking aspect which examines how each diocese is prepared in terms of the policies and procedures currently in place both to handle allegations of child sexual abuse and to prevent the possibility of any child being sexually abused in the future.
I am advised by the HSE that the report of this audit is at an advanced stage and that it expects to submit the report to me in June. I am concerned that the audit has taken considerably longer to complete than originally envisaged although I am assured by the HSE's national director, Mr. Gordon Jeyes, that the matter is a high priority.
The original audit, which was requested by the then Government in 2005 on foot of the Ferns report, covered a period up to mid 2010. However, the HSE considered that in finalising the audit at the end of last year with a view to publication, it was important to have the most up to date position for each diocese. Consequently, dioceses were given an opportunity to submit updated information. A very good response has been received with significant new material presented in January and February this year. I understand that this will require rewriting of the report, including potentially a redrafting of certain findings in order to incorporate properly this new, detailed information in the interests of producing a most comprehensive, up to date and relevant report. I wanted to facilitate that short extra period so the additional information received from the dioceses can be included.
Additional information not given on the floor of the House.
The HSE's legal advice is that it will be important to provide an opportunity for relevant dioceses to make a final comment on the factual accuracy of material and findings where significant redrafting is likely. The revised timetable indicated by the national director reflects the work involved in incorporating the most up to date material and giving individual dioceses an opportunity to comment on the factual accuracy of relevant sections. The need for follow-up action will be informed by the findings of the national audit and it is my intention to publish the report.
The national director is also at my request engaging directly with the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church on a programme of action designed to ensure the Catholic Church is responding properly and comprehensively to all child protection concerns and that it has in place the necessary safeguarding structures and practices to protect fully children who come into contact with the church.
The Government is committed to strengthening the arrangements for the reporting of concerns of abuse by putting the Children First National Guidance on a statutory basis. The necessary legislation is being worked on by my Department as a priority. This legislation will not only bring forward statutory requirements on organisations and individuals to report, but it will also support all of civil society in understanding what to do when they have concerns about a child. The roll-out of Children First will require all sectors and organisations working with children, including the faith sector, to put in place and demonstrate that they have robust safeguarding arrangements. I very much welcome the work undertaken to date by the national board to strengthen child protection practices in the Catholic Church in line with this objective.
Reports such as those published over the last number of years by various State-commissioned inquiries in respect of the dioceses of Ferns, Cloyne, Dublin and the report of the Ryan commission, serve to remind us all that the abuse of a child is a crime which is to be abhorred and that those involved must be subject to the full rigour of the law.
We must also recognise that child abuse takes many forms and occurs in many settings. Anyone with child abuse concerns or information should not hesitate to come forward and assist the HSE and An Garda Síochána in their respective roles in carrying out their work to protect children. In this context, I want to acknowledge those victims of clerical abuse who have shown great courage in coming forward to the authorities. I recognise that this has been a very painful experience for many individuals who have had to battle to have their experiences heard and believed and to have their suffering recognised.
I thank the Minister for her reply. I am disappointed that the publication of this report is continually being pushed back. A previous response from the Minister concerned the pushing back of a date for the children's referendum.
I am disappointed that the Minister is unable to commit to a clear timeline for the introduction of adoption legislation. How can she be so definite about a referendum date, over which she does not have control, when she cannot give a specific commitment with regard to when the adoption legislation will be produced?
Last summer the Minister told us that the HSE national child protection audit report would be ready by September. During the winter she told us it would be ready by the spring. Now she is telling us it will be ready by the summer. What communication did she have with the HSE when giving these assurances? Was the HSE able to say why the date of publication of the report was continually being pushed back? When the report of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church on the Diocese of Raphoe was published, the Minister refused to consider any type of independent investigation, pending publication of the audit report, the date for which which we are now seeing being pushed back. Much emphasis has been placed on the voice of the child. However, we are not acknowledging the voices of the many children who were failed by the State and the church. The Minister is waiting for the report before providing a forum to acknowledge their voices and experiences. This delay is not acceptable. What conversation did the Minister have with the HSE before she gave these commitments? Why was the possibility of delay not highlighted to her at that stage?
The delay is a reflection of the amount of work being done by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church and the HSE. The volume of material from the dioceses is as I have outlined. There has been a very good response, which I welcome, and a lot of new material has been presented. It was presented in January and February in response to further work the HSE was doing. It was on that basis that the board asked for extra time.
When the Deputy talks about timeframes, I must remind him this should have been published in October 2010. It was not.
Given the number of promises made by the Minister, she is not in a position to criticise others.
One of the reasons I am willing to respond to what the HSE asked me to do and, by implication, the church because it has presented the new material is that I want to receive as up-to-date a report as I can possibly get. It is reasonable to say there is new material that needs to be incorporated. I have received an assurance from Mr. Gordon Jeyes regarding the June date.
It will be the third or fourth postponement.
It is clear that more information is being supplied to the HSE for the audit, which is important, and it needs to be assessed and published. It is being examined and incorporated into the report. There are also legal implications. When one rewrites a report, natural justice demands that one go back to the people who gave the information. That is also part of what has to happen and it is built into the June timeframe.
I understand the Deputy's impatience to see the audit report, but we must remember the voices of the victims in Cloyne and the torture experienced by young children. It is critical that we have the report and can indicate the current situation relating to child protection practices in the church.
5Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of child protection teams that are short of staff as a result of the moratorium on recruitment; the number of children at risk because of these staff shortages; her views on whether the number of those recorded as being at risk on the risk registers are an accurate reflection of the situation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15129/12]
As Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, I have statutory responsibility for the child welfare and protection services. My colleague, the Minister for Health, in conjunction with the Minister for State with responsibility for disability, equality and mental health services and older people, has responsibility for mental health and disability services. I work closely with both, as I do with all members of the Government on children's issues. The question on the detailed service information sought relating to disability and mental health servcies would be most appropriately addressed to the Minister with direct responsibility for these services. The Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, was in the House earlier this afternoon to reply to specific questions relating to services within her remit.
The HSE has adopted a planned approach at national, regional and local level to the management of departures as a result of staff retiring. We had a discussion about the social work side earlier. The overall situation is set out in the national and regional service plans for 2012. The HSE's overarching aim is to protect critical front-line essential services and use a range of measures to manage the staffing situation, which includes using the provisions of the Croke Park agreement and delivering greater productivity through the reform of service delivery. Where critical gaps in services cannot be filled through redeployment, reconfiguration or reorganisation of services, some €16 million has been provided in the national service plan for the filling of priority vacancies.
More generally, my Department works with other Departments to harmonise and co-ordinate policies relating to children. During the current year this will be achieved through the development of a children and young people's policy framework and an early years strategy. Both policies will address health outcomes for children and the co-ordination of services to promote children's health and well-being. This is the first time we will have had a national policy for the early years and we will look at the range of services we need to deliver to that age group and their co-ordination. At a policy level, this will involve working across Departments.
Additional information not given on the floor of the House.
My Department will be working with the Department of Health to address these issues, with a particular focus on those children with the greatest needs, including disabilities and mental health problems.
Child protection teams are based geographically in the local health area office. During 2010 and 2011, 260 additional social workers were recruited and assigned across the country to child protection teams and children in care teams. The latest data available from the HSE show that in January 2012 the total number of social workers employed in children and family services providing services for children at risk and in care was 1,220 whole-time equivalents. It is important to stress that there is no moratorium on filling social work posts within the overall public sector numbers. The national director of children and family services will apply his discretion over the course of the year to the filling of vacancies, subject to meeting overall employment targets and on the basis that services are being delivered within available resources.
The Deputy refers to cases being recorded on at risk registers. He may be referring to the establishment by the HSE of a national child protection register as part of the child protection notification system which records children where, following an assessment and a case conference, the view is that there is a child protection risk. I have been assured that all referrals of child welfare and protection cases are assessed by the duty or in-take team. Those cases identified as the most serious or urgent are allocated immediately to a social worker. Other referrals may benefit from referral to a family support service, while some cases may be referred to other services. The number of referrals to the team will always be significantly greater than those in the child protection notification system, as the majority of referrals are not assessed as involving a child protection risk.
I am advised by the HSE that there was a total of 29,277 child protection and welfare reports to it in 2010. A total of 16,452 of these reports related to concerns about a child's welfare, while 12,825 were related to child protection concerns, that is, physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect. Of the 12,825 cases related to child protection concerns, 1,556 were confirmed as abuse cases and notified to the child protection notification management team.
The standardised business process to ensure consistent definitions for the purposes of information reporting is being worked out across all 32 LHOs in the HSE. I anticipate that the information available in 2012 will be of a higher standard. Since taking office last year I have been dissatisfied with the quality and accuracy of information available from the HSE on child protection, as well as the HSE's capacity to provide timely and meaningful information. I am pleased to inform the Deputy that significant progress is now being made by the HSE to remedy this. A major information technology project, the national child care information system, NCCIS, has now gone to tender. The NCCIS will be the central system supporting social work services. As a social work case management system, it will be used to record and store the case history of every child and other clients of the service. Management information will be derived automatically from it.
The aim of the NCCIS project is to identify and procure an easy to use technology solution to support this type of case recording and automatically provide management information. A first step was to develop agreed and consistent definitions and business processes across all social work offices. In this regard, a national standardised business process has been rolled out nationally. This will ensure the definitions used are consistent, for example, to ensure the number of recorded referrals relates to individual children, not families. I am confident that the process being led by Mr. Gordon Jeyes, the HSE national director of children and family services, will deliver the information needed.
As the Minister acknowledged, my original question was related not only to child protection teams, I also asked about child mental health teams, early intervention teams and disability teams, as well as the staff shortages in these areas. It is not acceptable for the Minister to say, in a bureaucratic way, that they are within the remit of another Minister. She is Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, not just Minister for child protection teams or social workers.
The Government talks about the need for joined-up thinking and co-ordination and its commitment to child protection. In her press release last Tuesday the Minister said there must be "robust safeguarding arrangements within all organisations working with children". Therefore, there must be joined-up thinking and co-ordination. We should be able to get an answer from the Minister on how the various services working with children are staffed, whether there are staff shortages and the problems they might cause. The Irish Medical Organisation has reported massive shortages in child mental health teams. For example, one team lost one third of its staff in the last year owing to retirements, staff going on maternity leave and redeployments. It now has eight members of staff, instead of the 38 recommended in A Vision for Change and can do only emergency work. It is part of the Minister's responsibility to say this is unacceptable. Children are being put at risk as a result.
I welcome the Government's commitment to publish the Children First guidelines, but what is meant by "shortly"? Publication was promised before Easter. Will publication be matched by the provision of resources? How can we seriously talk about child protection if we have child mental health teams with eight staff instead of the necessary 38? That is not child protection.
When we talk about Children First, it is important to be aware that a cross-departmental group is working on the issue. The Deputy is right when he says ensuring the safety of children involves cross-departmental work. We have a cross-departmental group working with the Garda and others are represented in the group which is looking at implementation of Children First. We must go right down through the Departments of Health and Education and Skills to ensure the guidelines are being implemented and deal with any issues that might come up, whether in schools or elsewhere. Only yesterday I had a meeting with the Irish National Teachers Organisation to discuss how the guidelines were being worked through in schools.
On Deputy Boyd Barrett's point on mental health, I am most concerned that young children and teenagers would have access to mental health teams. I discussed the matter recently with the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, who assures me that there is access for those aged up to 18 years in child and adolescent mental health teams throughout the country. I have outlined the situation on shortages. The aim is to concentrate on critical, essential, front-line services. A total of €16 million has been allocated for that purpose. In that context it is important to note that €35 million has been ring-fenced by the Government for the development of those mental health teams, including the child and adolescent mental health teams. The Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, with whom I liaise and work on the issues, indicated that 20 extra beds have become available for inpatient use for young people. There is progress in the area.
In so far as there is any progress, I welcome it. Surely the whole point of the Ministry becoming a senior one is that it must have an overview of child protection. In a certain sense the Minister should not respect ministerial demarcations because otherwise one could ask what is the point. Talk of €16 million for priority cases and front-line services does not address the point that is being raised by the IMO, namely, that there are chronic shortages of staff for child mental health teams.
The one example I have given the Minister is of a situation where there are only eight staff where A Vision for Change suggests 38 are necessary. That is a chronic shortage. It is difficult to see how children and teenagers who require those services are getting them. In fact, we are being told the services are only taking emergency cases. This is a real problem. The Ministry must have an overview and must blow the whistle. Otherwise, all the commitments in the world in Children First mean very little.
I accept Deputy Boyd Barrett's point on working with other Departments. I assure him that I am doing that. I am taking an overview. The policy overview on these issues is extremely important. That is why we are having the interdepartmental meetings on mental health as well as on how Children First, for example, is being implemented.
Deputy Boyd Barrett asked me also about child protection teams. I have already indicated - as I am sure the Deputy heard - that an extra 25% of social workers were recruited. An extra €19 million has been allocated. That must mean better services for children. There is no question about that, given the 25% increase in social workers working with families coming to the HSE, for example, and an extra €19 million being put into services. I agree that demand exists and that families have serious issues that require a prompt response. I am working cross-departmentally on the issues raised by the Deputy and I will continue to do so.
A new national children's strategy is being developed this year. It will look at children from birth right through to the age of 18. I accept that any development of a national children's policy must look at issues such as how we deliver mental health services, disability issues and other areas. As Deputy Boyd Barrett correctly pointed out, there has been a need for co-ordination on these areas.
