Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am accompanied by the Secretary General of my Department, Mr. Jim Breslin, Catherine Hazlet, Mary McLoughlin and Peter Hanrahan.

In June it will be two years since the establishment of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and this meeting provides a timely opportunity to review what we have achieved thus far and the substantial body of work that remains to be done during the lifetime of this Government. As my briefing note has been circulated earlier, I will summarise the issues arising. Members will be familiar with the commitments set out in the programme for Government. These commitments include: the holding of the referendum; the establishment of the child and family agency on a statutory basis in order to fundamentally reform child protection services and remove responsibility from the HSE; implementing the recommendations of the Ryan report; maintaining the free preschool year and improving its quality as resources allow; enacting legislation to consolidate and reform the law on adoption; and investing in a targeted early childhood education programme for disadvantaged children, building on existing targeted preschool supports for families most in need of assistance, such as the youngballymun project. We are now receiving the findings of these research projects and we have given a further commitment to implement projects on an area basis. We have also committed to ending the practice of sending children to St. Patrick’s Institution.

The Department has been working to improve outcomes for all children in Ireland. Among the steps we have undertaken are: the referendum to amend the Constitution and the detailed legislation proposals for the reform of adoption. I outlined the position on the establishment of the new child and family agency to Deputies Ó Caoláin and Troy in Question Time this week. The agency will take over functions which currently reside in the Health Service Executive and for the first time we will have a dedicated agency working in the area of family support and child protection. We are finalising our work on the Children First guidelines, building on the work of this committee, and are developing the new school age child care initiative. Members have raised questions about this initiative, which we will begin to pilot in coming weeks. These child care places will be available for the new school term in September. We have ended the practice of sending 16 year old boys to St. Patrick's Institution and the work is well under way of ending the practice of sending those aged 17 years.

We are also developing a five year high level children and young people’s policy framework. As members will be aware, our focus is on the early years strategy. I express my gratitude to Dr. Eilis Hennessy from UCD and the members of the early years strategy group, who meet regularly and have held a number of workshops recently on developing the strategy. Certain organisations are making their own submissions regarding what they think should be contained in the strategy.

We are implementing a new area-based response to child poverty at a full year cost of €4.75 million, building on what we learned from the prevention and early intervention programme. Whereas we previously relied on American and English research, we now have a body of research on what works for Irish children in their early years. This will be helpful in terms of building area based responses to child poverty and influencing the work of other professionals and mainstream services in this country, such as public health nurses. The research suggests key messages about the kind of intervention that works for families and children in more vulnerable situations.

Members asked a number of questions about the development of the child and family agency. I outlined in my briefing note the range of work that has been done thus far, including administrative, organisational and legislative work. I thank the staff of my Department for their huge efforts in this regard, led by the Secretary General. They have done considerable background work on the establishment of this agency. We will introduce legislation in the current Dáil session and I do not doubt that the committee will want to examine it. Organisational preparation is under way for a major process of change. We will be transferring 4,000 staff into a new agency with a dedicated focus. The budget is €550 million at present and, when other agencies are brought under its umbrella, will be close to €600 million.

It is one of the Government's largest and most ambitious areas of public sector reform currently under way. That is because we have had those 17 reports and the history of not dealing effectively with them. As the various reports, including last year's child death report, indicate, it is not always about extra resources, but also how we do our work. During the years of the Celtic tiger we did not see some of the fundamental reforms needed in order to provide the range of services in an effective way, and that is very clear from the reports. We had investment but still had poor outcomes. There is a big challenge for us to meet in turning the sector around and establishing a new way of doing the work.

The milestones that have been achieved already are outlined on page 4, including the separation of children and family services within the HSE from other health and personal social services with discrete management responsibilities and budgets. That means the managers now have a sole focus on this area of child protection and family support. They are not working on the hospital agenda but are working on child and family services only with discrete management responsibility. There is a change programme and external inspection by HIQA. We will receive a number of inspection reports in the coming weeks and months and will learn a considerable amount from those reports. We are responding to the reports, as we already have, for example with fostering.

There is dedicated child and family responsibility and accountability at area, regional and national management team levels. An industrial relations process has been under way over the past year and I thank all of the people involved. Staff have been informed and that has gone very well, with letters sent to 4,000 staff at what is clearly a time of change for them. Mr. Gordon Jeyes is the full-time director. Ms Nora Gibbons is the chair of the new agency. She will initially chair the Family Support Agency, which is one of the bodies to be merged. I will also seek expressions of interest for board membership of the Family Support Agency through the public jobs website. I ask the Chairman to make time available for Ms Nora Gibbons to appear before the committee in her role as chair.

I wish to speak about Children First. An interdepartmental group has been established at which Departments, the HSE and the Garda Síochána are represented. The purpose of the group is to promote the importance of Children First compliance across Government and to ensure consistency of approach. That interdepartmental group is providing supports to Departments to ensure they introduce tailored implementation plans of Children First so that all that work can take place in advance of the legislation. That work involves a benchmarking of existing structures, mechanisms and activities. The current phase of the group's work is focused on the preparation phase of Children First sectoral implementation plans, which will be finalised shortly. In addition, the Department is developing reporting mechanisms for other Departments in respect of the implementation of Children First. All of that is necessary and a progress report on that committee will be submitted to Government in the near future. These are strengthened arrangements for the implementation of Children First and represent an important step in preparing for the legislation.

A number of submissions were received on which we are working. Details are outlined on page 7. We want to ensure the legislation complements the work already done, National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 and the Criminal Justice (Withholding Information on Crimes Against Children and Intellectually Disabled Persons) Act 2012. I will submit proposals to Government as soon as possible with a view to the drafting of the Children First Bill as a priority.

Child care is a topic receiving considerable attention. I obviously want to strengthen child-care provision. Approximately €260 million is invested in the area annually. In January 2010 a free preschool year was introduced. This universal programme has been very well received and we want to maintain that universal year. Some 65,000 children are availing of the preschool provision. Under the ECCE programme, services are contracted to provide the free preschool year in return for an annual capitation fee per qualifying child. The free preschool provision represents a significant investment with €178 million being provided in 2013. With the increasing numbers of children, each year my Department needs to find the extra money to continue to support that free preschool year. Some 4,300 services are participating in the free preschool year. There is a major job in terms of inspection and monitoring to ensure the standards are to the required level, and it is going extremely well.

The introduction of the free preschool provision coincided with a change in Ireland's economic fortunes, with a substantial increase in unemployment and a reduction in the standard of living for many families. The programme ensures children get a high-quality experience at preschool and many children who would not otherwise be able to attend preschool get the value of it. It also represents a considerable saving to parents, saving up to €3,500 for families. Even though it is a half-time service, it represents that kind of saving for families given child-care costs at present.

Access to free and affordable child care is an issue we need to address because it is a barrier for families. In order to address this issue, budget 2013 announced a new school-age child-care initiative. My departmental officials have done considerable work with the Department of Social Protection to prepare for the introduction of these new free after-school places. Yesterday I attended a conference whose theme was the quality of the development of out-of-hours services for children. A group of NGOs are working together to bring a greater focus and have asked me to produce a national policy for all out-of-school services across the board, including child care, youth work, breakfast clubs and after-school care. That is an area we are examining more closely than we have in the past. There is considerable scope for the development of high standards in out-of-school services, focusing particularly on the range of services that are there.

My report contains a section on adoption and I would be very happy to take specific questions on the matter. At the moment Dublin is hosting a meeting of all the central adoption authorities from around Europe. I attended part of that meeting yesterday. It was extremely interesting to hear from the adoption authorities across Europe about the changing face of adoption in Europe. All countries outlined a dramatic drop in adoptions. Sometimes we think this is happening only in Ireland, but it is a Europe-wide phenomenon. This has implications for the various adoption agencies. Many such agencies in other countries are in financial difficulties. There is a move towards surrogacy, which is obviously a controversial issue, and countries vary in their response to it. There is an absolute move within Europe towards the adoption of special needs children.

The meeting focused on the need for families to be prepared if they want to adopt and to have an understanding of the changing face of adoption at European level. Clearly there is major concern about the number of children in institutions worldwide. The representative from the Hague Convention told me it wants to do more work in countries where children are available for adoption in trying to avoid institutionalisation. In their own countries they are moving more towards fostering and other services to avoid that institutionalisation. There is a mismatch between the many children who still need to be adopted and the capacities of countries to put in place the legislation needed to make that effective. It is an ever-changing area and one this committee may wish to consider in detail. It is very important for us to provide families who wish to adopt with high-quality information about the changing nature of adoption. There is a mismatch between the expectations of couples and that changing face of adoption.

We are still working on developing a children and young people's policy framework, which will be in place by the end of the year.

This is the overarching framework which should guide delivery of our services for young and older children over the next five years. This work is being developed, a range of consultations has taken place and work is ongoing in the Department in this regard.

I have also outlined the prevention and early intervention initiatives and the area-based response. We know the benefits of early intervention. As I stated, very good information is available to us on research being done. A total of €30 million was invested in Ballymun, Tallaght and Darndale and we are gathering the research from these initiatives, which were supported by the Government and Atlantic Philanthropies. Atlantic Philanthropies has indicated its interest in supporting further early intervention work on an area basis. We have begun work on outlining how to approach this and I can answer questions on it.

Deputies are familiar with the Irish youth justice service. I will bring to the Government amendments to the Children Act 2001 to provide for the management of all facilities on the Oberstown campus on an integrated basis. This legislation is ready and it is a question of priorities and whether we have time to take it this term.

I hope I have given an indication of the range of work in which I and the Department are involved. We have a demanding series of objectives and we are working very hard to try to fulfil them.