Dr. Niall Muldoon:

The Barnahus, Onehouse Galway pilot project is based on a Scandinavian model that started in Iceland. Under this model, a child who has suffered sexual abuse and has alleged sexual abuse is brought to one venue where he or she is offered a forensic medical examination and gets to meet a member of the police. In Iceland, Barnahus goes a step further by having a judge in situ. When the child is interviewed by the police member, the judge will be listening and watching from a different room with the alleged offender and his or her barrister, who can ask the child questions through the police member. That is the end of the process. The child is finished with any legal set-up within 24 or 48 hours, at which point the judge makes a decision on whether the case will go forward. We have adapted the model for Ireland because we have a slightly different legal system. The Barnahus, Onehouse Galway pilot project has a medical forensic system. A child who makes an allegation is brought to the Galway set-up for a forensic medical assessment. He or she meets the garda and the social worker at the same time, which means he or she does not have to repeat the conversation and does not have to engage in different places. The public servants who serve them come to them in that setting. It has taken us a long time to bring about this fantastic set-up. I have been working on it for at least ten years. We now have the gardaí, the social workers and the medical forensic personnel co-locating. We also have support from CARI, which provides a volunteer to assist the child.

There is one thing missing from our point of view.I keep pushing for it. There is no therapeutic support in that service at this moment in time. The child goes back on a waiting list for ordinary psychology or something else. That is the missing link as far as I am concerned. We need to push on. We have seen what can be done if all the people I have mentioned are co-located. We went to New York, Oxford and Belfast, where this has been done and is happening. When all the agencies are co-located, they work much more effectively through personal relationships and interactions. People learn about one another's work. It creates an opportunity to have a much safer and more collaborative piece of work for the child. Children do not feel that they are being pushed from Billy to Jack at different times. They do not have to go to different people to repeat their stories. Similarly, their parents and other family members know they have to go to one place only. When they do so, they are introduced to one person who introduces them to the next person. The story is passed on. They do not have to take charge of repeating it. We hope to put in place a therapeutic strand to enable children to move on to therapy fairly quickly. That creates a holistic support for the child or young person in question.

That means that system allows the child to recover from a mental health situation and move forward. It also means the forensic and criminal justice system looks after itself much more quickly. The child does not have to worry as much. It is not a case that after being interviewed by the Garda, a person could be interviewed by social workers in three months and then he or she might get the chance to go to therapy. All these things happen one after another. It all happens fairly rapidly and they co-ordinate together. That is a huge step forward.

One of the best examples I always give was when we went to Oxford. They gave an example of a phone call coming into a social worker at 4.45 on a Friday evening. In this scenario, somebody is concerned about a child because the father has threatened to take the child out of hospital and run away with him. The policeman is sitting beside the lady taking the phone call, and as soon as she writes down the address and before she has hung up the phone, the police have a policeman at that house checking things out, simply because they are sitting in the same room and working together. We all know that at 4.45 on a Friday evening in any social work office, nothing will be done subsequently until Monday afternoon. Those are the simple things and just by co-locating we will change the system, change the thinking and change the opportunities that come for our children. We will provide proper children's rights systems.