Dr. Niall Muldoon:

From our point of view, it is hugely important. What you are doing is recognising that children have a different set of needs to everybody else. Children cannot look after themselves. They need extra supports. They need support to access education. They need family support. They need to be facilitated in their growth as young people in their own right. That is agreed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The State is derelict in its duty by not having that extra support. Children who find themselves homeless and for whom we have been unable to provide shelter have already been neglected. We then need to provide the best possible support so that trauma is somehow mitigated. Child support workers are not even a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, but they are a start. Not having them should not be countenanced.