Robert Troy
Ceist:28. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs his plans to reduce waiting times for counselling services for child victims of sexual abuse. [14472/15]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 15 April 2015
Ceisteanna (28)
Freagraí scríofa
The Child and Family Agency, Tusla, along with other agencies, provides counselling and support to children and families availing of its services including children who have been abused sexually. If a child is taken into care as a result of sexual abuse, the allocated social worker in Tusla will provide counselling and support.
Where children have suffered sexual abuse, therapy services are available in a variety of settings. There are specialist sexual abuse centres at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin and Temple Street Children’s University Hospital. Therapy services are also provided by HSE community based psychologists and the HSE Child And Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) for children who have moderate to severe mental health problems.
In addition, the Assessment, Consultation & Therapy Service (ACTS) is a national specialised clinical service which has been developed in order to provide multi-disciplinary consultation, assessment and focused interventions to young people who have high risk behaviours associated with complex clinical needs. ACTS also supports other professionals in their ongoing work with young people and their families. This includes:-
- on-site therapeutic services to young people in secure settings in Ireland (Special Care and the Children Detention Schools)
- support when young people return to community settings to help them to re-engage with mainstream services as appropriate
- assessment, consultation and/or intervention services in the community for children at significant risk of placement in secure settings.
Tusla is currently leading a multi-agency process to implement a national service model for sexual abuse services for children and their families. This process aims to incorporate all resources currently applied to sexual abuse services into a co-ordinated service providing standardised models of best practice with national and multi-agency oversight. It integrates and co-ordinates the six separate sexual abuse services which children may need to access. These services include medical/forensic examination; child protection; Garda investigation; assessment; therapy and court process.
The agencies involved in this process are Tusla, the HSE, the Children’s Hospital Group, the Probation Service and CARI. The model is informed by the recommendations of the Ferns Report 2005 and the National Review of Sexual Abuse Services for Children and Young People, June 2011 (HSE/Mott McDonald).
All agencies are committed to the implementation of the model with a number of initiatives currently under way. For example, the HSE is establishing a new medical/forensic examination facility for the greater Dublin area; specialist sexual abuse services are being developed within the context of the development of the national paediatric hospital and Tusla is employing four additional staff at Principal Social Worker grade to support the implementation process.