I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the opportunity provided by the committee to talk about the extremely important development of Barnahus and its implementation in Ireland for children who have been subject to child sexual abuse. The Barnahus model in Ireland will ensure that children who have experienced child sexual abuse, regardless of geographical location, will receive a standardised response and ongoing support through an extremely difficult time in their lives. I also welcome members of the interdepartmental group, including members of Tusla, An Garda Síochána, the HSE and Children's Health Ireland, who have also been called to give evidence to the committee. I am joined by my colleague, Ms Doyle, who is assistant principal in the Department and a social work specialist with the unit.
The Icelandic Barnahus model is a child-friendly response model for the co-ordination of criminal and child protection investigations of child abuse cases, and provision of support services for child victims and their families under one roof. The Barnahus model was recognised in 2015 as a promising practice by the committee of the parties to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, or the Lanzarote committee. The model is replicated in Finland, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden and is in the process of being adapted in more than a dozen other European countries. I recently had the opportunity to present at a conference in Montenegro organised by the Council of Europe and the EU Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support, DG REFORM, on Ireland’s progress in its implementation of the Barnahus model to 46 members who are part of the Council of Europe states. I will report that Ireland is not doing too badly. We are probably at a middle-rank status among those countries. There is still a lot of work to do but we have made considerable progress in the past 18 months to two years.
The Barnahus model is in use across Europe. A strong network of support for research, training and best practice guidance is available to countries implementing the model. Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, is a founding member of the PROMISE Barnahus Network, which represents 36 organisations and individuals in 22 countries. The five core elements of Barnahus, which means children's house, have been identified as: a multi-professional approach; the one-door principle, meaning that a child has only to come to one centre; a commitment to avoid secondary victimisation, achieved through a joint child investigative interview that allows for multi-professional observation; a safe place for disclosure and a neutral place for professional interventions; and a broad target demographic and definition of child abuse.
Under this model, a child who has experienced and-or disclosed sexual abuse can come to a child-friendly location where gardaí, social workers, doctors, psychologists and other professionals can provide the services that may be needed. The aim of the model is to reduce re-traumatisation by reducing the number of times a child may need to describe their experience. That is a key principle of the Barnahus model. On-site forensic medical services are provided under the model, delivered by forensic paediatrician and nurse specialists, all at the same location. The model also aims to increase prosecution rates in cases of child sexual abuse before the courts. The model will produce high-quality evidence, gathered in a manner that focuses on avoiding re-traumatisation. The model will also assist and promote ongoing efforts to deliver child-friendly justice by supporting children and their families through the trial period.
Ireland has been party to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, or the Lanzarote Convention, since 2020. It has undertaken to strengthen its response to child sexual abuse in line with the Lanzarote Convention, the EU strategy on the rights of the child, and EU directives on child sexual abuse - Directive 2011/92/EU - and victims’ rights. It has implemented promising practices from other countries on child-friendly justice. The need to improve services for children who experience sexual abuse has been highlighted in key reports examining State responses to child sexual abuse in Ireland, including the 2005 Ferns report, the 2009 Ryan report and the 2011 Mott MacDonald report. Recommendations made in these and other reports include examining how services to child victims can be improved, how trauma can be reduced through interagency working and how key agencies can be brought together to address the needs of children and families going through this very traumatic experience.
In 2018, HIQA was invited by the then Minister to investigate the management of allegations of child sexual abuse against adults of concern by Tusla. It brought a focus to the need for interagency working in respect of children in need of protection and therapeutic support. An expert advisory group, EAG, was established in August 2018. That group identified, among quite a lot of recommendations, the Barnahus model as a key recommendation in its final report, which was published in September 2019, to guide the development of a more integrated service in Ireland for children who have experienced sexual abuse. That recommendation 4.6 states: "Multiagency child sexual abuse teams will be implemented on a national basis. A pilot of the One House/Barnahus model will commence in 2019." This pilot commenced in 2019.
An interdepartmental group, IDG, is in place, led by the Department of children, which I have the privilege of chairing, with representatives from the Departments of Health and Justice, and key service delivery agencies, including Tusla, An Garda Síochána, the HSE and Children's Health Ireland. A Barnahus national agency steering committee, BNASC, is also in place, which is independently chaired by Dr. Imelda O'Reilly. It co-ordinates and oversees development and implementation of a national Barnahus service. In 2021, the IDG established the BNASC to co-ordinate and oversee the development and implementation of a national Barnahus across three regions.
These are the east, west and the south. BNASC comprises representatives of Tusla, An Garda Síochána, the Health Service Executive and Children’s Health Ireland. It has an independent chair, as I mentioned, Dr. Imelda Reilly. It reports to the IDG for the purpose of co-ordinating the efforts of the agencies. Dr. Reilly also sits on our IDG.
Since its inception, BNASC has led the development of key national priorities and service enablers including inter alia the definition of a national Barnahus vision; the development of an overarching interagency agreement; national service criteria and a national referral model; forensic medical examination service specification for children and adolescents following concern or disclosure of sexual assault or abuse; a national Barnahus therapeutic framework; and the development of the joint specialist interview protocol.
With two of the three centres now operating and a third under discussion for the east - I am glad to report that the south went live in May and the pilot has been operating in Galway since 2019 - the BNASC is focussed on implementation and scaling-up of Barnahus, on communication with stakeholders nationally, and, in collaboration with the IDG, on ensuring effective multiagency oversight for Barnahus in Ireland once all regions are established and operational. The interdepartmental group has agreed and adopted a roadmap for the development of a national implementation plan based on what has been learned from the development and implementation of the initial Galway project.
As part of national implementation of the Barnahus model, a pilot project was launched in Galway in 2019 and has been receiving referrals since November 2020. The centre has, at one specially designed and equipped location, a child-friendly interview suite, a child-friendly forensic medical examination room and secure evidence storage, and is co-located with adult sexual abuse treatment unit, SATU, services. It is a fantastic centre. An appraisal of the pilot was completed in 2020 and the recommendations from this were adapted into a roadmap for national implementation. The 29 recommendations in the 2020 roadmap were extracted from the report of the 2020 appraisal, which was commissioned by the IDG to examine and evaluate the pilot Barnahus-One House service provision model in Galway and to identify issues which might be associated with the scaling-up of the project in terms of the two other sites identified in the country, that is Cork and the east, in Dublin.
This year the IDG put out for commission a more recent evaluation. It is going through a research tender process. We expect to have another evaluation completed some time this year. That will greatly inform the learnings from Galway. There is quite an extensive waiting list for therapy and that will really inform the implementation of the model.
As well as Barnahus West being fully operational, the Barnahus South began operating on 1 May. It is intended that the east will open soon and all will provide national coverage and access for children and families in the east. As the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, through Tusla, and the Department of Health, through the HSE, have shared the costs in respect of the capital build of Barnahus West, it hoped that this principle in respect of shared capital costs will carry forward in respect of a new location that is required for Barnahus South in Cork and also Barnahus East. Through the respective Departmental budgetary process in 2023, separate business cases were made for additional posts to expand services provided in Barnahus West and Barnahus South. These business cases will be made again as part of the budgetary processes in 2024.
Additionally, Barnahus was mentioned in the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman’s performance statement to Tusla for 2024 with funding identified of €1.2 million. It has been agreed in principle that the Department of Justice is to cover costs by An Garda Síochána relating to interview suites as needed in each centre. However, the majority of the costs will be borne by the Departments of children and Health.
The IDG and the Department of children have completed a draft memo to the Government for a decision on Barnahus implementation and it is hoped that the memo will be submitted by June to the Cabinet for consideration. The IDG will continue to oversee the development and implementation of the governance structure to support national implementation of the Barnahus model for children who experience sexual abuse and their families. The structure consists of: a formal three-departmental agreement between the Departments of children, Health and Justice; the continuation of the IDG and also the BNASC national agency steering group committee. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth secured funding and consultancy support under the technical support instrument fund of the EU DG Reform, in the EU Commission and Council of Europe. The technical support instrument provides on-demand tailor-made technical expertise. It was launched in January 2023 at Farmleigh. I draw the committee’s attention to a briefing document that has been provided by the EU and Council of Europe today. It outlines very clearly a very strong work plan with policy reviews and the remaining work that will be covered by its support up to November this year. I would like to pay tribute again to the their involvement. It has really progressed the pace of implementation.
The Council of Europe is the implementing partner providing project management support to this initiative. The project was launched in January 2023 by the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman and the covering Minister for Justice, Deputy Harris. We hope to mark the end of the EU-Council of Europe involvement later this year. The project will run until February 2025. It will address key areas such as data sharing under the model, the development of pilot training on trauma-informed care and the development of a communications strategy and action plan. Two working groups have been established: one to develop an operational strategy and action plan to scale-up services and the second to work on activities relating to addressing issues identified on data sharing under the model. As well as these working groups, additional work is underway to develop a training plan on trauma-informed care and also to review the 2003 good practice guidelines relating to specialist interviews. The Council of Europe is getting behind that with the Department of Justice and An Garda Síochána. That is a really important development. We have forwarded for the committee’s attention a document from EU DG Reform. The work has progressed rapidly over the past 18 months.
We thank the committee for the opportunity to speak about Barnhaus and we are open to any questions from members.
