Dáil debates

Thursday, 21 November 2019

Supporting Children out of Emergency Accommodation and into Homes: Statements

 

1:40 pm

Photo of Anne RabbitteAnne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. The Oireachtas Joint Committees on Children and Youth Affairs and Housing, Planning and Local Government have spent a lot of time on this issue. They interviewed a large number of advocacy groups and those working in the area, including the Ombudsman for Children and Focus Ireland, among others. The resulting report, which was launched in the audiovisual room last week, contains 20 recommendations. As I said at that launch, the committees operated like yin and yang. The housing committee looked at the issue from a practical and mainly legislative point of view. It asked what needs to be changed through legislation to enable progress to be made or to overcome roadblocks to exiting homelessness. The children's committee on the other hand looked at the issue from a very child-centred perspective and offered practical solutions for children.

I will now draw attention to some of the more sensible solutions put forward. We discussed the issue of homeless families in emergency accommodation and the difficulties they faced in filling up the long summer days. One practical suggestion was the provision of Leap cards for all children so that they could travel with their parents. I would love to see that practical solution delivered. Another solution proffered was providing free access to Office of Public Works sites. There are many fabulous OPW sites all over the country. If families had Leap cards, they could leave their emergency accommodation and visit various sites. Families could have a very valuable day out. Homeless children would be no different from other children enjoying a day out with their families and finance would not be a barrier.

We do not want to see homeless families with children having to self-refer for accommodation. We spoke at the committee about local authorities and the need for empathy. When parents present to the local authority homeless service, they are asked questions in a box-ticking manner about whether they have children, how many children they have and so on. The appropriate number would be filled in and that would often be the end of the conversation but we do not want the conversation to finish there. There must be real engagement and understanding of the needs of these children. They need to continue to attend school, be involved in their communities and maintain their relationships with their friends. We all know how important the formative years are in children's lives but homelessness breaks stability. School is the one constant for many families. Parents do their best to keep their children at their local school and to ensure that nobody knows that they are homeless so that they can hold on to their pride. This is why we must try to move away from self-referral and one night only accommodation for homeless families with children. When the local authorities are addressing issues for homeless families, they must listen to the voice of the child. They must include questions about school, involvement in clubs and so on. We need to see more empathy.

The committee also had a wide-ranging discussion on family hubs, not all of which was negative by any means. Indeed, it was a very balanced conversation. The main issue with hubs is how long families can expect to be in them and what is acceptable in that regard. Families do not want to find themselves institutionalised. There must be a timely pathway out of hubs. There are 26 hubs in operation and they are a mixture of good, bad and ugly. We heard various stories about them but the Ombudsman for Children and Focus Ireland were very fair in their assessment of the hubs. The main recommendations regarding hubs is that they are inspected regularly and that all adults using family hubs are Garda vetted to reassure parents that their children are in a safe environment. We also recommended that efforts be made to involve children in the local community and to provide them with good outdoor space.

Finally, there is a significant role for the Department of Education and Skills in this area. It could provide additional funding to schools to enable them to provide a hot meal and a snack before children go home and to provide spare uniforms. The latter would make a real difference when families have difficulties with washing clothes and so forth. Children's pride is very important here so involvement in this regard should be limited to the class tutor and the school principal. The aforementioned committees have put forward practical suggestions that would not cost an awful lot but would make a world of difference to homeless children.

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