Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 17 April 2018
1333. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if her Department monitors organisations working with children and young persons to verify whether they have developed a child safeguarding statement. [15180/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraMy Department will not be monitoring all organisations providing relevant services to children to establish whether they have developed a child safeguarding statement.
The obligations of all Government Departments regarding oversight and compliance with the Children First Act are set out in section 27 of that Act.
Section 27 requires each Government Department to prepare and publish a Sectoral Implementation Plan that outlines the programme of measures to be taken to ensure that the Department, and any body that provides a relevant service and receives funding from that Department, comply with the provisions of the Act.
The Sectoral Implementation Plan for my Department, which was published in March 2018, is available on www.dcya.gov.ie. It contains information about:
a) relevant services provided by or on behalf of the Department;
b) measures taken or proposed to be taken to promote, review and report on compliance with the provisions of the Act and of the guidelines issued by the Minister under Section 6;
c) monitoring and review procedures, and
d) such other matters (if any) as the Minister considers appropriate.
The Deputy may wish to note that sections 12 and 13 of the Children First Act provide that Tusla has the authority to establish a maintain a register of non-compliance to those organisations who fail to produce a child safeguarding statement when requested to do so. Tusla has recently established a Child Safeguarding Compliance Unit and is currently developing a strategy to support implementation of this provision. As this is a new statutory obligation for many organisations, Tusla will focus on encouraging and supporting providers of relevant services to meet their statutory obligations and will endeavour only to place relevant service providers on the register where a supportive approach has proved unsuccessful.
