Ms Grainia Long:

The ISPCC is pleased to give evidence on the heads of the criminal justice (victims of crime) Bill. This is important legislation for children as it recognises the unfortunate reality that many children and young people are victims of crime and that they are also holders of rights. It follows the vote of the people in November 2012 to enshrine in the Constitution the protection of children as individual rights holders. The new Article in the Constitution states, "The State recognises and affirms the natural and imprescriptible rights of all children and shall, as far as practicable, by its laws protect and vindicate those rights."

The focus of the ISPCC is on three areas in the Bill. The first of these is the need to ensure the legislation endeavours to meet the spirit and intent of the relatively recent change to the Constitution to ensure it meets Ireland's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Second, we will focus on information and support to children, ensuring it is accessible, age-appropriate and specialist. Third, we will focus on some practical measures to ensure culture change - a phrase we have heard used already in the new system - is driven and supported by professional development.

On the first point, as the national child protection and welfare charity, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is delighted that the Bill will move from a criminal justice system that is often narrow, minimalist and compliance-led in terms of its approach to the inclusion of children to a system that works proactively to ensure children who are victims of crime have their needs understood as well as met. The key principle under which implementation should be judged is the culture change and shift in mindset in our criminal justice system. This requires that steps are proactively taken to provide information in a child-friendly manner, that interviews are undertaken in a child-centred manner while ensuring standards of evidence gathering are met, and that sufficient resources are provided to have well-trained professional staff in the legal and courts systems and Garda to ensure cases involving children are progressed in a timely manner in order that the child victim has the best possible opportunity of recovering from an ordeal that could otherwise have a profound effect on his or her development.

The ISPCC, therefore, welcomes the preamble to the Bill which includes provision for the best interests of the child to be a primary consideration. We also welcome the recognition that children require special protection measures. However, we concur with the view expressed by the Children's Rights Alliance that the best interests principle should be included in the Bill's provisions rather than in the principle set down in the preamble. This is an important point. There should be no ambiguity regarding the centrality of children or our compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. If the Bill is to inspire culture change in terms of how we treat children in the criminal justice system, the best interests of the child must be a key driver.

Information and support is a critical area for the ISPCC and, I am sure, other organisations. The UN Human Rights Council obliges states to take steps to ensure the recovery and social integration of child victims. This is very important as it recognises that being the victim of a crime can have a profound psychological impact on children in the immediate and long term. I will refer briefly to a recent example involving a young girl aged 14 years who was the victim of a house robbery during which she was bound, gagged and threatened for a long period while being the witness of violence to family members. The girl returned to school within a few days of her ordeal and life was expected to go back to normal. Although the Garda was involved in the matter, no discussion took place on support for the young girl until she started to struggle at school and her parents became concerned. She could not stay at home alone and lights had to be switched on at bedtime. When she was referred to ISPCC support services, we found during our work with her that while she spoke about the trauma she experienced, she spoke more about her feeling after the experience that she had been, to use her words, left "in limbo". She did not receive any direct information from the Garda about her circumstances and was in effect left to one side after her statement had been taken. She had many questions we could not answer and she believed the people who could answer them did not consider them to be significant or important. This undoubtedly affected her recovery which took longer as a result.

In our experience, the voices and experiences of the child are often lost in an adult-orientated investigation. All child victims should be provided with information that is age appropriate and, what is important, they should be provided with information regarding services which offer support for victims of crime. Such information was not offered in the case I have outlined.

I will speak briefly about other examples of the lack of resources in the criminal justice system. The ISPCC provides therapeutic support services to 500 children and families per annum. Some of these children have been victims of crime and, without exception, our childhood support workers attest to the importance of communicating with children and helping them to understand what has happened. This has a significant impact on a child's ability to cope, recover and build resilience following an ordeal involving crime. Crime has profound effects on a child's mental health, stability and well-being.

Earlier this year, the Ombudsman for Children, on child abuse, referred to the establishment of the National Counselling Service, providing therapeutic services to adults who had been abused in childhood. This consists of a network of service centres located no more than one hour to anyone in need. However, the ombudsman stated that no equivalent free accessible counselling service is available to children affected by abuse. The ISPCC, Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, operates a waiting list for our child and family support services. We have anecdotal evidence that some children wait between six months and one year for a child psychologist.

The Bill’s intention for children is dependent on whether adults working with children also recognise the centrality of a child-centred approach. If children are to receive information in an age-appropriate way, if they are to be interviewed in a child-centred manner and if child-centred communication is to become the norm, then a brand new approach is needed. We listen to 460 contacts annually from children. Our volunteers and staff are trained in building trust and rapport in active listening and engagement techniques. This takes time. Gardaí and legal professionals must step up, which means quite a culture change in how we work with children.