Mr. Jim Gibson:

There is follow-up work for us as an agency in respect of Dr. Shannon's report. We gave a commitment to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs that we would review the 91 cases outlined in that report. We have communicated on two occasions with An Garda Síochána with regard to seeking the identifiers and the geographical location of those section 12s. That allows us to undertake an audit of all the cases that were in the report to satisfy ourselves that the contacts and the professional decision making did occur.

As chief operations officer I took it upon myself to do a snapshot audit of one county in Ireland that Mr. McBride mentioned earlier. There were 14 cases, which were quite interesting because they showed the span of cases that arise out of hours. I needed to assure myself that staff were following up on section 12s. All of the 14 cases in the county were responded to and some children came into care. Some young people who fell out with their mum and dad because they were drunk at home and were put out of their homes were placed in the local hospital by the gardaí, and were returned home the following day but with a support plan and an intervention plan. To give a real idea of how we would do that and would like to mentor young people who have a difficulty with drugs or alcohol, instead of placing them in residential care where they do not have a good outcome, we coach parents in how to engage with that young person who is full of drugs or alcohol, and to wait for the appropriate time to deal with those issues. For example, in the north west a member of an organisation in the voluntary and community sector is contracted with us to do intensive parenting coaching for adolescents. If there is a pattern of the young person arriving home drunk every Friday night and having an argument with his mother, who might be a single mother, kicking the TV in or ripping the door off, then being told to leave and wanting to come back because he has nowhere to go, we coach a social care or youth worker type of individual to come into the family home to show the mother how to parent the situation. The mother is told to get the young person to bed when he comes home, get him to settle down and not to confront him or create a scene which might give rise to verbal or physical aggression and then to make a nice breakfast in the morning. The youth worker will come and coach the mother in how to engage with her son and raise the issues of concern to her, that he is drinking, that he is with the wrong crowd and so forth. Creating those supports works really well.

That is outlined in the documentation which we will give to the committee. It details Tusla's initiative on creative community alternatives which is building an integrated approach to the multiple issues that young people and children experience. As one agency we cannot resolve those. We need an integrated response. Many young people known to our service are also known to the gardaí for petty crime or to the Probation Service because they are on an order in the youth diversion scheme, or to the mental health services. By creating a team in communities we can collaborate with other agencies to put a wrap-around teamin place to intensively help that young person and family get a better outcome, as opposed to removing the person from the family and community. That is the very important work we need to get on with, promoting and engaging with other key agencies in and around communities.