Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

As part of the ongoing change agenda in child and family services, I am committed to developing the capacity of our child protection services to address appropriately and effectively the needs of children who present in emergencies outside of normal working hours. At present, the Health Service Executive provides out-of-hours emergency services for children at risk in the greater Dublin area through the crisis intervention service, and outside the greater Dublin area through the emergency place of safety service. The crisis intervention service provides an out-of-hours emergency social work service to young people aged under 18 years who are in crisis. The service operates across the greater Dublin area - counties Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow - and referrals are made outside of normal working hours by service providers, that is, gardaí and hospital and ambulance service personnel.

Outside the greater Dublin area, the HSE operates an emergency place of safety service whereby gardaí can access an emergency placement for children found to be at risk out of hours. This service involves the out-of-hours placement of a child in a family setting until the next working day when the local social work service assumes responsibility for the case. As part of this service, gardaí have access to advice and information from a non-HSE social work off-site resource which is provided on a contract basis.

I am acutely aware of and share many of the ongoing concerns regarding the need to develop these services further and I am committed to implementing service developments in this area. I informed the House on the previous occasion I contributed on Question Time that the HSE had piloted and is currently evaluating two out-of-hours pilot projects, one in County Donegal and the other in County Cork. The former project commenced in mid-2011 while the latter commenced in the third quarter of last year. Both projects involve the provision by local HSE staff of social work support out-of-hours where deemed necessary by gardaí. HSE social workers are on call out of hours to respond to referrals. I am informed by the HSE that having undertaken an initial internal evaluation, it commissioned an independent external assessment of the projects. This evaluation, which is being undertaken by Trinity College, is expected to be completed in the near future and the HSE hopes to receive the report in the coming days. A decision on progression to a national roll-out will be made following evaluation of the two pilot projects and other relevant data.

See this speech in context