Ms Nuala Ward:

That is exactly it. We live and die by the principle of the best interests of the child. The best interests of the child is to get things fixed quickly. In fairness to most of the adults we reach out to, be they school principals or professional social workers, when we explain to them the impact on the child, what is going on in that child's life and the impact it is having on the family, a lot of the time they will sit up and say, "Okay, tell us what we need to do and we will reach out to the family". Sometimes it is simply about communication and information sharing and, therefore, it is really important that we try to fix things first because investigations are very intense. When we go to investigations the one thing, and this is a key theme Dr. Muldoon has reiterated, is for the system to learn. We cannot keep going back and bringing up the same case again and again. When we do investigations, our recommendations are systemic in nature and are supposed to help all children who may be affected by that issue. That is why we find them incredibly important and most of the time we find that services take our recommendations seriously.