Ms Koulla Yiasouma:

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for the introduction. I thank the committee for the invitation to engage with its members today. It is an honour to be the chairperson-designate of the board of management of Oberstown Children's Detention Campus. I will tell the committee a little about myself. I am a qualified social worker. Initially, I worked as a probation officer in England and then briefly in Northern Ireland, where I have lived for 29 years. I continue to be registered as a social worker with the Northern Ireland Social Care Council. Regarding my ethnic background, I am a Greek-Cypriot by culture, but I was born and brought up in London. As I said, I have lived for over half my life in the North.

Over the last 25 years, I have worked to realise the rights of children and young people in Northern Ireland, particularly those involved with the criminal justice system. I led an NGO for 17 years which supported young people who had care experience or been involved in the criminal justice system to improve their employability through work experience, training and education. We were also the primary policy and advocacy organisation for young people in the criminal justice system and we engaged with all relevant decision-makers in Northern Ireland, the UK and Europe more broadly to ensure best practice was implemented and the voices of those young people involved in the system were heard.

In 2015, I was appointed by the then First and Deputy First Ministers to be the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People. My term ended in March of this year. Like the Ombudsman for Children in the South, it was my role to safeguard the rights of children and young people, monitoring and advising on every aspect of government. Naturally, I continued to work with the youth justice system in that job, supporting young people with individual complaints, conducting formal investigations and monitoring and reviewing policy, legislation and services.

My career goal has always been to demonstrate that being child's rights compliant is essential for us to have an effective youth justice system, one that keeps the community safe, is able to respond to the needs of victims and that enables young people to overcome the consequences of childhood experiences through those interventions supporting them to develop alternative behaviours. Rights-compliant youth justice systems use international frameworks and robust evidence to inform how they respond to children in conflict with the law.

I will start with the aspect of robust evidence.

That requires drawing on academic research and often the first port of call for me over the past two decades has been the work of Professor Ursula Kilkelly, my predecessor in this role. Her work and advice have been key in informing my own advocacy on issues, particularly the best interest principle and custody for children. It is therefore a huge honour to be succeeding Ursula in this role and to progress the work that has been taking place in Oberstown over the past decade.

Regarding international standards, incorporating the Havana rules on juveniles deprived of their liberty, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC, general comment No. 24 states that where detention is unavoidable the State should make it count for children. Detention should address their educational and training needs, improve their health and well-being, support relationships with their family and community, and provide an environment for leisure, social and sporting activities. Systems, policies and procedures should be in place to ensure that detention is a safe place for young people and that restrictive practices are used sparingly. Finally, international standards require that there are independent and rigorous monitoring, supervision and complaints mechanisms to protect the rights of children in detention, holding the detention system accountable, on behalf of society, for the care of children there.

The reason I applied for this role is that there is clear evidence that Oberstown under the leadership of Professor Kilkelly, the board of management, the current director, Mr. Damien Hernon and his predecessor, and the wider staff and management teams, has made significant progress to ensure that the centre complies with these standards for which Oberstown has gained an international reputation. My ambition is to build on this.

Moving on to the campus itself, as the committee will be aware Ireland ratified the UNCRC in 1992 which, along with other rights instruments, is explicit that detention must be a measure of last resort, imposed only for the shortest appropriate period of time. This provision is explicitly recognised in section 96 of the Children Act 2001 and a range of community-based sanctions are now in place to divert young people from offending in general and from detention in particular. The Children Act makes clear that the children for whom no suitable alternative is available and who are placed on a detention or remand order in Oberstown are entitled to a placement that provides for their needs across the key areas of care, education, health, work on offending behaviour and preparation for leaving. Indeed, these are the goals of Oberstown under the legislation and they form the basis for the model of care known as CEHOP - Care, Education, Health, Offending Behaviour and Preparation for leaving. That model is designed to ensure that child-centred and integrated placement planning is core to the time young people spend in detention.

More recently, and building on this approach, the Oberstown board of management adopted the children’s rights policy framework with the consent of the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth under the Children Act. The framework sets out the rules that govern the campus, the rights to which all young people are entitled while in Oberstown, and the duties on staff, management and the board to meet those needs. Importantly, this framework informed the new judgment framework adopted by the Health Information Quality Authority, HIQA, which inspects Oberstown annually.

The continuous and substantive improvements in the care provided to young people in Oberstown has been achieved through the work of staff and management on the campus and is clearly evidenced in the HIQA reports, the most recent of which was undertaken in November 2022. These reports are published annually and stand as a detailed and objective record of all that has been achieved over several years in this most challenging of environments. Of course, they also highlight where progress still needs to be made.

The board of management comprises me as chairperson and 12 other members, with representation and nominations from staff, the local community, relevant Government Departments and agencies and five members appointed through the Public Appointments Service, PAS. I was also appointed through PAS. It is apparent that the board is hardworking and a recent independent review concluded that it demonstrates the highest standards of compliance with the Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies and governance standards more generally. I am looking forward to leading and working with the board as we build on this.

Oberstown has a budget of €27 million with a staff of 266 full-time equivalents, including residential social care workers and night supervising officers who bring exceptional care and skill to their work with the young people. The campus has an occupancy certificate of 46 young people, 40 boys and 6 girls, and in 2021, there were 102 young people on campus through the year, with an average daily population of 31. While the numbers vary, the majority of young people are in Oberstown on detention orders.

Oberstown has a statutory obligation to provide educational, training and other programmes and facilities for children referred to it by the court in a manner that embeds an ethos focused on the care, health, education and long-term welfare of those children. Oberstown's records show that while children are there because of their offending, they often have adverse childhood experiences in their backgrounds such as abuse, trauma, domestic abuse, parental mental ill-health and parental drug and alcohol misuse, which failed to be addressed throughout their lives. Often they also come from our most socially and economically deprived areas. To be able to address these issues requires a multi-agency approach and wraparound service, of which Oberstown is one element. The campus is in a unique position to be able to give young people the building blocks so that they can re-enter their communities and families where possible. This unique insight into the lives of the young people and the effectiveness of policies, legislation and services can support the wider children’s system to change and develop.

In accordance with the Oberstown 2022 to 2027 strategy published last year, the centre will continue to develop its model and will publish outcomes that demonstrate the impact that it makes in the following areas: providing safe and effective care of children under the CEHOP model; developing successful partnerships to do its work; incorporating the voice of young people; ensuring that staff enjoy their work and feel safe and supported; having sufficient resources that are used effectively and efficiently; adhering to best practice standards of governance; and ensuring that the campus is sustainable.

I am at the beginning of a four-year term and I look forward to engaging with the committee throughout my tenure as chair.