Ms Norah Gibbons:

I thank members for their comments. We are at the beginning of this new agency. Although much background work has been done, we really are at the beginning. We are beginning because of the HIQA investigations, which members will continue to see published. We are beginning to gather the kind of information that was not available to the Minister, as she rightly said, when she took up responsibility for this new role and for the creation of the new Department. We are very much at the beginning but we are starting to get concrete information on where children are at, particularly children with needs that are not met within their families.

The task force did not want this new agency to be an agency only for troubled children. I am very much in favour of the local in terms of meeting the needs of most or nearly all of our children and of only moving towards a regional or a national system where children have very particular needs that perhaps cannot be met locally. The best way to ensure this agency does not end up as an agency for troubled children only is to do what we are doing - that is, to build in and blend in services provided by, for example, the family resource centres, Barnardos, the Daughters of Charity and other organisations providing family support, which provide a very basic information service for children in their locality, general help and general tips which all parents, including myself, need as they start out - things that concern all families. Also, in the same place, we must offer help and support to children who need more than that.

My vision for this agency is that it is an agency not only for troubled children. However, I am very conscious that at the core, we will have children who are in the care of the State - the children who, as I said, have a huge right to demand our resources because they are in the care of the State. We have become their parents.

One of the things that is clear from the publication of the HIQA reports and which Senator van Turnhout talked about - cases in which there are concerns but we are not talking about child protection - is that there is a pathway for a decision to be made after an initial assessment. This is something the family resource centre can help with. Maybe a family has not been to the family resource centre and maybe somebody has a nugget of information which is germane to what is happening in that family but which has never been given to anybody else. For example, teachers in schools often have that nugget of information. A child is doing okay but suddenly the teacher will notice that the child is coming in without a lunch and is dishevelled in a way he or she was not previously. If the teacher does not communicate that concern to somebody who can engage with the parents and find out what is going wrong, that is likely to turn into a crisis.

Like the vision of the task force, my vision is very much for a broad-based agency, so that if a child and family come through the door or if I knock on a door and explain why I am there, I have at my disposal not only my own skills but other skills in the locality, particularly psychology skills, if that is what is needed for a child, so that he or she does not have to go on a waiting list and wait for other problems to develop. I want it to be a safe agency, a caring agency and a non-stigmatising agency, which is very important for our children and our families. In other words, we want people not to feel they are doing something really bad as parents but that they are going to the agency because they are good parents and want to be better. However, that is not to disguise the fact there will be some children who will be in need of more of a service than is basically available. The important thing is that other help and support is given to that child and that people work together.

The other aspect that comes up in all of the reports is the lack of sharing of information. As happened in the Roscommon case, 15 or 16 agencies went in but sometimes they were working quite separately from each other and not helping each other with information. People said they were there to do this bit or that bit. If we continue like that, the agency will not be a success. I am quite determined that this will be a successful agency, as are others who work in it. It has to be successful because we have been given this opportunity to do something. Although it is happening at a time when we do not have all the resources in the world, one of the things I think will greatly help is the pulling together of different agencies so that we are not using scarce resources over and over in a haphazard way and that we have a detailed plan for the child and we make good use of the resources we have.

I am a social worker, so I recognise my own bias. The agency is undertaking a review of social work caseloads in this jurisdiction. It has been done in different countries at different times and I am sure we have tried to do it before. I am looking forward to the results of that review. If we identify that we need more resources, we will talk to the Government about that situation. That is our responsibility. However, we might also identify that we need many more family support workers, for example, a mix of resources and a mix of skills. I am looking forward to seeing that work, which has been going on over the past two years. That kind of information will be readily available to us. It will then be my responsibility and that of the board, together with the CEO, to talk to the relevant Department about the resources we need, and I put the Minister on notice in this regard.

What happens if we do not have the resources? What gets left behind? I referred to the partnership with key providers in family support. We all need to work towards the one goal. What are we doing? What is the outcome for the child for which we hope? Are we on the right path? Sometimes one goes down a path with a child and family but it does not work. If we have tried very hard but it is not working, what else do we need to do for this family rather than add in another service?

We have a lot of work to do but we are on a good path and we are beginning to have the kind of information from the HIQA reports and the internal audits - such as the neglect audit, which needs to happen in other places - to see what learning we need to pick up. I am really pleased that in the autumn, Ms Lynn Peyton from Northern Ireland and Dr. Helen Buckley from Trinity College Dublin will take the results of that neglect audit and of the reviews into significant incidents and child deaths and hold concentrated workshops with staff to pull the learning out from all these inquiries so that they do not get put on a shelf. I am very committed to the continuation of that kind of learning because, as we would have known in the Roscommon case, despite the fact that there was a very similar tragic death of a child in the neighbouring county, the staff to whom I spoke had never had it discussed with them. It was discussed at the time and then it was left there. New staff were not acquainted with the lessons from those reviews. It is really important that we pick up on that.

In response to Deputy McLellan, I do not believe we will get that level of neglect coming back over time. I do not believe poverty is in any way equal to abuse. Many families living in and experiencing poverty do not in any way abuse their children but, of course, financial worries on top of other problems in a family can exacerbate parenting issues.

We all need to recognise that. During these times we know that more children are living in consistent poverty and more children are at risk of poverty, and we need to be alert to that. The money going into a family is very important in respect of poverty, but so are the services available to those families. We need to build the family support and NEWB work to make sure that it remains with us.

There are 12 members of the board of the current Family Support Agency. My first appointment - as long as members are happy - is as chairperson of that agency and that will be my main task. I do not take over as chairperson of the board of the child and family agency until it is established. I will arrange a meeting of the board when the Minister tells me who is appointed to the board. I have already been going into the offices of the Family Support Agency on Fridays - they have been very kind to me - and I have acquainted myself further with the work of the agency. I was delighted to attend two weeks ago when family resource centres from around the country were showing us the work they were doing, and I hope to get out and see more of them. I value that work very much.

I have had concerns about children in direct provision for some time, because some of the direct provision available in this country is not perhaps in children's best interests. It is certainly not in their best interests to stay there for a long period of time. Clearly the HSE child and family services would always respond if there were specific child protection concerns expressed to them. Children and families should obviously not be there. It is not a place to bring up children, because the fundamental things, such as what to cook and when to cook for them, are not available. I hope that we in Ireland can do better and we should heed the warning of the Ombudsman that this is an area that we do not want to be investigating in a few years.