Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to appear before the joint committee today. I extend an apology from the Ombudsman for Children who is unable to attend as she is out of the country as she has been invited to address an international conference for UNICEF. I am sure she would be quite happy to take up the invitation by the Chair to try to attend a meeting of the joint committee before the end of this session.

As the Chairman will be aware, during the past decade the Ombudsman for Children has used her statutory remit as set out in the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002 to monitor children's rights and welfare in Ireland, including through our complaints and investigations function. Some of the issues highlighted by her to date include the situation of children being detained in St. Patrick's Institution, the necessity to set up a committee to review all child deaths, the situation of separated children and how they are cared for and the issue of children and homelessness.

The Ombudsman for Children's Office, OCO, is ten years old this year and in that time it has received more than 10,000 complaints from children and their advocates in respect of a wide variety of issues. The reason we are attending this meeting and presenting three different reports is to highlight the range and consistency of issues we have addressed with regard to child protection and children in care.

The office felt that it was appropriate at the time when the new Child and Family Agency is being established to lay before the Oireachtas these reports in order that it and more especially this committee can be in possession of the most up-to-date data relating to what system issues are arising and how they are adversely affecting children. It is our firm belief that by setting out the range of issues, the recommendations made and the action accruing from the HSE and-or from the Child and Family Agency as a result that the office can afford this committee the knowledge to scrutinise the relevant Departments and agencies properly about their ongoing progress in this area.

Since the office was established in 2004, child protection has consistently been an issue of concern. The first special report to the Oireachtas in 2006 related to complaints of a child protection nature. The first own volition investigation was into the State's implementation of its child protection guidelines, Children First, initiated in late 2008 and published in 2010. Since then we have published numerous individual cases that contain child protection concerns.

Today, we welcome the opportunity to discuss a suite of three reports that the Ombudsman for Children believes raise issues that need to be addressed and, equally important, contain detailed findings and recommendations setting out ways in which the delivery of child protection services can be improved. The office is conscious of its responsibility to make recommendations that promote the best interests of the child.

The reports we are discussing today are the recently published Meta-analysis of Repetitive Root Cause Issues regarding the Provision of Services for Children in Care, 2014; An Investigation into the Implementation of Social Work Services in North Lee, published in 2013; and the previously mentioned Investigation into the Implementation of Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children, published in 2010. Each of these reports is based on rigorous and robust investigations, which at all times adhere to our mandate to be neither an advocate for the child nor an adversary to the public body, thereby ensuring fairness has been afforded to all.

In chronological order, the first report before members today is the Children First investigation in which the Ombudsman for Children sought to establish the extent of implementation of those guidelines, which had been established in 1999. The Ombudsman for Children initiated the investigation, of her own volition, because she had seen numerous individual cases where the rigour or application of the Children First national guidelines for the protection and welfare of children was questioned in various areas of the country. The Ombudsman for Children's investigation found a lack of consistency across many areas of the country in how the reporting of physical, sexual and emotional child abuse and neglect was handled despite the existence of national guidelines for almost ten years at that stage.

The findings of this report include poor inter-agency co-operation between the Garda and the HSE; poor record keeping; insufficient efforts made to drive forward the implementation of Children First; evidence of poor quality assurance and a lack of consistent local procedures; and a lack of a 24 hour external access mechanism for people reporting child abuse. It is important to note that this investigation was initiated prior to the Ryan report being completed. It was within this report that the Ombudsman for Children was the first to call for the HSE to "consider whether child protection services are best delivered within the context of the HSE". This was a clear indication that this office was concerned that the whole child protection mechanism was being lost within the mammoth HSE system.

Having made such a call, this office welcomes the establishment of the new Child and Family Agency, to be known as Tusla. We are pleased that it comes under the aegis of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. This ensures the focus is much more clearly on children and their families than heretofore. I can highlight the importance of having a specialised agency such as Tusla by reporting that in 2013, just over a quarter of all cases dealt with by this office related to issues under the remit of the newly established agency.

The second report relates to a complaint that was received, which highlighted concerns about the capacity of a local HSE area to cope with the level of child abuse reports being received. The issues that were highlighted included the screening, assessment and follow-up of referrals in the area. At the heart of this investigation was a desire to ascertain whether cases where children were reported as being abused had been adequately assessed and followed up in a manner which ensured the child was safe. This investigation led to seven recommendations, including the requirement for better national oversight of referrals and resource allocation in the area, the need for social work caseloads to be addressed by HSE at national level so that guidance can be given to social work teams on caseload size and weighting and the need for a full HIQA inspection to take place in the area. We also recommended, not for the first time, that the HSE needed to improve its public accountability by gathering and publishing appropriate and accurate data on its activity in the child protection field. At that point, the most recent figures available were three years old. The HSE said the claim that children were unscreened and unassessed and have had no follow up is unfounded and unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, it went on to implement all of the recommendations.

The most recent report before the committee is "A Meta-Analysis of Repetitive Root Cause Issues Regarding the Provision of Services for Children in Care". Approximately 10% of all cases examined by the office each year relate to children in care. That is a significant body of evidence on which to draw. The ten cases we have selected within the meta-analysis are representative of the issues and trends that have been identified from that sizeable cohort of cases. There were approximately 6,400 children in the care system in December 2013. The majority of them were in foster care. A small number of children - some 324, or 5% of the total in December 2013 - were living in the residential care system. With two exceptions, all the cases in the meta-analysis refer to children in residential placements. The purpose of the meta-analysis is to highlight the significant cross-cutting themes we have identified and ensure they are given attention so that children and families should not need to have recourse to this office on these topics in the future.

In the meta-analysis report, the office recognised the huge efforts and important contributions made by many staff involved in the care of young people. Seven main issues that arose needed to be highlighted. I will go through the recommendations for improvement made by the office in each case. On the issue of the provision of residential care for children, we recommended that a strategic development plan for residential care of children is required. On the issue of the protection of children in care, we recommended the introduction of a multi-agency policy, procedure and system which can identify, refer and respond to situations where young people in care place themselves at risk through their own behaviour. On the issue of assessment and care planning, we recommended that a comprehensive and robust assessment of need to inform care plans and integration between care plans and placement plans, with social workers as key co-ordinators, is required.

On the issue of social work practice, we recommended the implementation of a revised staff supervision policy, the provision of sufficient training and resources and the introduction of an annual audit. On the issue of inter-professional and multi-agency collaboration, we identified a requirement for corporate parenting across all Departments, State agencies and relevant service providers and a need for the annual report to report any issues in this regard to ensure they are properly accounted for. On the issue of record-keeping, we recommended the full implementation of a new policy on records management, the training of social workers in this area and the annual auditing of records to ensure quality. On the issue of governance, we recommended that robust governance should be in place to avoid a recurrence of these issues in the future.

At least two of these issues were present in each of the cases within the meta-analysis. This is an indication of the repetitive nature of many of the system failures. Members will recall that the issues of record keeping and interagency co-operation were highlighted in the Children First investigation. This clearly shows the systemic nature of the flaws. Some of the cases in the meta-analysis highlighted certain problems. For example, one child moved between 11 placements in four months. Another child was forced to stay longer than necessary in a justice facility because of delays in completing an assessment and sourcing an onward placement. In another case, Children First was not implemented in a particular HSE region until late 2012. Given the own-volition investigation we carried out and the assurances that things would change in 2010, this was a very disappointing discovery.

Our office engaged with the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, when she was serving as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. We have also engaged with departmental officials and the CEO of the Child and Family Agency around the issues set out in the meta-analysis. I am pleased to include a response from Tusla in this report. It is the belief of the Ombudsman for Children that the Oireachtas, particularly the Joint Committee on Health and Children, is well placed to monitor and hold to account the Department and the agency on their progress with these issues. The Ombudsman for Children does not believe her office should have to investigate these issues over and over again. Now that the new agency is in place, they should be addressed. It is her intention that the findings in this report and the recommendations it contains will contribute positively to the ongoing reform of Ireland’s child and family support service. She also intends that the root causes identified will cease to be the subject of examination by this office, other than in exceptional circumstances.

Children in care may have had difficult childhoods. Most of them have experienced periods of instability and insecurity. They may have had their education disrupted and their health needs neglected. They are entitled to the right to prepare for a successful adult life. That should not be hampered by the very service set up to aid them. We hope the committee will find these reports, considered collectively, and the issues we have raised today helpful when it is engaging in its regular reviews of the work of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the Child and Family Agency. The ability to learn from our mistakes is something that makes good systems better and affords hope for the children of the future. I thank members for their time and attention.