Mr. Cormac Quinlan:

I just wanted to frame that.

I will start with referrals that comes to us of a child protection or welfare concern. The first thing we do is to intervene with the family to assess the level of concern. We talk to the family in a collaborative way to find out about the past harm, what we know has happened to the child and, most importantly, about the impact on the child. There are many complicating factors in families which we explore, such as parental drug misuse. Some of those factors may be impacting on the child to a greater or lesser degree, some may not. We do not assume there is an automatic impact, that because someone is using drugs it will definitely impact on the ability to parent, but we explore the impact with parents. We always balance that with the strengths the family has and safety. Even when danger has been present for the child, have there been examples of situation where the parents were able to keep the child safe even in the context of any complicating factors that might be present? We work in a collaborative way.

Then we try to agree with the families on the shared concern we have for these children into the future, the likelihood that something else will happen, based on what has already happened to the child. The likelihood is a future-focused statement of what we think. That is often based on what we know from research or otherwise, that if this has impacted on the child and it continues, it is likely to have a negative impact on the child in the future.

Then we try to set goals with the family that target us towards building a safety plan and a clear trajectory towards achieving safety for those children, keeping them at home. We recognise that, even in contexts where danger is present, other services play a critical role in addressing some of those complicating factors. We also recognise that addressing alcohol or drug misuse can take a long time, so we are trying to build safety around children that recognises that we can still create safety for a child and keep the child safely at home while those challenges are still there for a parent. Critically, how we do that is to involve a network of support, such as the extended family and friends network, which is an informal network and a formal network of professionals who support us in that. We work in a clear way.

There is an escalation process. We may start at a lower level of safety planning. We may then reach the threshold where a child is at significant risk of harm when we hold a child protection conference that involves multiple agency stakeholders with the family where we talk about additional risk and putting in place a child protection safety plan. It is only then we may decide if safety cannot be assured, to apply to the court. Court thresholds are high. When we go to court, the court is not keen to give us an order. We must absolutely show and prove to the court that we have exhausted all efforts.