Ms Kate Duggan:

I will start and will ask Mr. Hone to speak on some of the detail. It is important to us that, behind the headlines, the story is there and people are aware of special care and the very vulnerable young people. There are young people in our special care services and at a much lower level in our residential care services who, because they may be going through a very traumatic period, may hit out. Their behaviour is quite significant. Staff have had their noses broken, have had broken bones, have been kicked and punched in the stomach and on the ground, and have been pulled to the ground by their hair. We have a duty of care to protect our children but we also have a duty of care to make sure that our staff have a safe place to work.

We are a service regulated by HIQA. One thing we looked at, because it has been used in other jurisdictions, is the use of close protective personnel for the specific and infrequent purpose whereby, where there is a significant risk to the staff in a particular unit at a particular point of time, we have a different professional in there who can safely remove staff from a very violent episode. We had to make sure that we worked with HIQA to make sure that this new grade of staff did not in any way affect our registration. We worked with HIQA to make sure that our policies and procedures reflected and stayed compliant with our registered services. HIQA obviously has full oversight of us with regard to inspection, monitoring and registration of our special care services. Those types of incidents or outbreaks of volatility from young people are in a very small number of situations but we have to understand there is health and safety legislation to protect our staff.