I am advised by the Director of Oberstown Children Detention Campus (OCDC) that no young person was transferred from campus to another service location, due to a lack of on-site psychiatric and mental health service provision in 2018.
Care to children in OCDC is provided under the CEHOP (Care, Education, Health, Offending Behaviour and Preparation for Leaving) framework. All children are assessed on their arrival in Oberstown for any psychological concerns and an appropriate care plan is drawn up to help meet their individual needs.
Psychiatric and mental health services are provided in Oberstown by the on-site Assessment, Consultation and Therapy Service (ACTS) provided by Tusla and the provision of an in-reach psychiatric service provided through the Health Service Executive (HSE). ACTS is a national service that provides clinical therapeutic services to children placed in special care units managed by Tusla and children in Oberstown. ACTS also engages in short term interventions, when children return to their communities, to support them to re-engage with mainstream services, as appropriate. The service is flexible in that, as children move between placements, it continues to provide clinical services. The role of the service is to determine, based on the results of the mental health screening in conjunction with other available reports, if a young person needs more specialist assessment or intervention from specialists within the clinical team. The multidisciplinary team includes counsellors with expertise in substance misuse, psychologists, social workers, social care workers and speech and language therapists.
The in-reach psychiatric service provided by the HSE currently includes a psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse. These work as part of the multidisciplinary team which includes the ACTS team and the Oberstown care staff.
Oberstown also has a fully equipped medical and dental facility on campus where children can access the necessary medical services and support.
Since 2017 STORM (Skills based Training On Risk Management) has been rolled out in Oberstown for staff directly engaging with young people. This training equips staff to provide direct interventions with young people who display suicidal ideation or who have attempted to self-harm, and/or to commit suicide. The aim of the STORM interventions is to teach young people how to identify what triggers are linked to these feelings as well as to develop new ways of coping that will reduce their risk of self harm/suicide. Training commenced at the end of 2017 and is ongoing throughout 2018.
