Ms Karen Kiernan:

I thank the Chairman. We are pleased to be here to address this important Committee on Children and Youth Affairs on what we see as the hidden issue of children in private family law, the lack of services and lack of cohesion around the care and supports for these children. For 44 years One Family has worked with people who are parenting alone, sharing parenting or separating. We were originally established as Cherish in 1972 and that may be a more familiar name to some of he members. Ireland is becoming more diverse all the time.More families are separating and more children live in blended, step-parent families. The European trend is that this will continue. Marriage rates are stable but separation and divorce has been increasing slightly, so that as a society we see our services and laws are still in the process of catching up. Certainly more investment is needed so the services and infrastructure needed around family law can be out in to support children as they go through what can be quite difficult transitions in their families. Separation is a long process in Ireland and the requirement for divorce is a separation of four years out of five. The separation process goes on for a very long time and this can be very difficult for parents and children. When people are sharing the parenting of their children it is a lifetime relationship and it is very important that people are able to establish the systems, practices and plans that help them to share parenting. One Family sees people who can do this very well. They focus on their children, they communicate well, they make good decisions they have predictability for their children. We also see some parents who are violent and abusive, are incapable of being child centred, they feel threatened and are threatening, and they can use the court system and their children as weapons. Most people are somewhere in between two stark opposites. We want to get people right on the good, functioning side for their children or a lot of harm could be done. Separation per seis not bad for children, but how it is done and managed can be bad for children.

I will now turn to the services, systems and policies that are available. There are the statutory services such as the Family Mediation Service. This service has long waiting lists and it is only available in some parts of the State. The Legal Aid Board is also under funded with a many waiting lists. There are also the domestic abuse organisations and ourselves, One Family. There is, however, no cohesive system built to help these children and families. The new Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 is a great step forward in recognising the types of families in which children live and also in allowing courts to direct parents to undertake counselling or parenting programmes. Those parents must do this at their own expense. Equally, where a court needs an assessment - a parenting capacity assessment or a section 47 assessment where they see what is going on in the family and if there are chid safety issues - parents must pay for these assessments themselves. If they do not have the means to do so then the court does not have the full information available to it. There is no funding for counselling, timely mediation, parental assessments, parenting programmes or child assessments. There is no funding for parents to deal with emotional impact of their separation. many of the problems encountered by One Family are where parents are not being as child centred as possible and it is because the parent is in pain and they also need the time, space and support. Separation is actually like a bereavement in many ways but without the sympathy. The parents need to make a lot of decisions very quickly and they need to make big financial decisions. they need to make decisions about heir children and they are often thrown into a legal system that is inherently adverserial , none of which is good for children. One Family would advocate for an alternative system. Services such as counselling, mediation and parenting programmes really help people to do all of this well. These services are inexpensive compared to anything to do with courts or the law. They keep people out of the courts and help them make good decisions that they can stick to rather than a court made decision. A judge could have ten or 15 minutes on a case but if parents can take the time to work it out themselves it is something that they can live with for longer and it is good for their children. There is, however, no coherent system or funding to support this kind of work.

With regard to child contact centres, we are very pleased to be able to speak about these with the committee. These centres are safe and supported places where children can spend time with the parent they do not live with. These centres can be found throughout Europe and the United States. There are pretty much no centres like this in Ireland. One Family has researched this issue and we ran a pilot centre with Barnardos, funded by the State for a few years, and it was very successful and used by the courts. We received very high conflict families who had multiple child protection or welfare issues. We were able to provide services for parents and safe places for parents - often the dad but not exclusively - time to spend with their children so that relationship was not lost altogether. We were looking for the best interests of the child. Those programmes were very well evaluated and were supported politically and by the courts and Judiciary, but were closed due to lack of funding. Courts in Ireland now do not have anywhere to refer vulnerable families and children at risk in private family law cases. The do not have access to assessments and reports that we were able to do and sometimes parents, often fathers, then may not get to see their children because decisions are made perhaps without full information. Or, sometimes a person is ordered to supervise their child but they have a barring order against the other parent. They have to break the barring order to provide supervised access. None of these situations are satisfactory. Sometimes children can be court ordered into contact or access with a parent who is incapable of abusive, none of which we want to happen. From an economics point of view, when those centres were running people were in and out of the courts less and it saved court and legal aid board time, which was good.

I will now turn to the recommendations. I believe Ireland is catching up. Divorce is still relatively new in Ireland and we have not got the kind of infrastructure systems that are in other countries. We have a history in Ireland of seeing things in the family as private and within the domain of a private family rather than needing to provide supports around that. We want people to be able to separate well and to share parenting of their children well. We recommend that attention is paid to what services are needed from a child's perspective and when the reform of the law and the Family Law Courts happens that investment is made around what children need. The legal infrastructure is one thing but if money is not put in to these services it can be very difficult. There are benefits to reducing the use of courts for conflict and all those issues and children have better relationships with their parents. Ultimately, we need a system such as the UK's Cafcass system. It is a child and family service; they are in courts, they do assessments, they risk assess families, they provide parenting programmes and it is a very comprehensive welfare system, specifically around families and children. Ireland has nothing like that and there are always gaps here, so children are sometimes getting lost in those gaps. Ireland also needs a number of child contact centres. I have some research reports around the value of the centres and what they cost. These reports are available online and I have put the link in our presentation to the members of the committee. If we were to consider one centre per Tusla area, which would be 17 child contact centres, it would cost around €3.5 million per year. This would cover the entire State and give very good services for vulnerable families. I thank the members for their attention.