Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State back to the Seanad. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the Bill which, as Senator Norris said, is aimed at amending the Children Act 2001. The reality is that there are 5,500 children in care, a substantial number. A recent report states almost half of these are aged between 14 and 15 years. This is a very vulnerable time for them, with the onset of puberty and the difficult teenage years. However, the Bill does not address how the need for care may be reduced, something about which Senator Cannon spoke.

We need to look carefully at how we can identify much earlier children at risk, oftentimes in their families. There are ways to identify such children. Schools regularly notice them. When I was a practising primary school teacher, the then president of the INTO, Ms Sally Shiels, spoke about the need to have an at-risk register for children. Such early intervention is needed. There is a need for early identification of children at risk, followed by early intervention before matters become so serious that a child has to be placed in care. While we are discussing the need for special care orders and how they should be planned, monitored and ordered, etc., we must also seek to reduce the number of children who end up in care.

The care period is followed by an after-care period, which is critical, as mentioned by every other speaker. We must not forget how serious are the effects. Many who have been in care have ended up in poverty, affected by homelessness, addiction and often criminality. Senators Alex White and Ó Brolcháin talked about the cost of after-care, with Senator White indicating the figure might be about €11 million per annum. Perhaps that is a small price to pay, if we look at the real cost in terms of poverty, homelessness, addiction and criminality, as well as the cost to the justice and prison systems.

As part of an early school-leaving study in which I am involved, with the Oireachtas and an expert group of 27 practitioners and researchers, we have gone into the prisons. I believe the cost of providing a prison place is conservatively estimated at about €100,000 a year. This is not necessarily good for the inmates concerned.

These are just some of the overarching general points I wanted to make. The Minister of State spoke about the objective in providing special care, namely, to provide for a stabilising period of planned care to enable a child to return to less secure care or home as soon as possible. That is a good vision, although it has been said none is outlined in the Bill. As stated by Barnardos, the Irish foster care group and the Irish Association of Young People in Care, we need to look on the Bill as an opportunity to strengthen and build on current legislation. It is a significant opportunity for the Government to strengthen the protection services provided for children subject to special care orders and placed in secure care or high support units.

Our purpose should be to improve and develop the system rather than cementing current difficulties and gaps in special care provision. I concur with much of what Senator Norris said about areas in which I will be seeking to have amendments accepted by the Government. The first will seek to have included a statutory right to representation for children through the appointment of a guardian ad litem or a solicitor. A second will seek to reform the language used in special care orders in order that the focus would be on the welfare of the child and service provision, rather than his or her detention, which suggests criminality. The third will seek to provide for the achievement of outcomes based on best practice models internationally and to place the provision of aftercare on a statutory basis for all children in the care system.

I will briefly discuss each of these points. It is great the Minister of State is present for this debate and that he is listening to the points being made with a view to accepting the amendments we are proposing to ensure the care experience is better for the child who ends up in care. The period in which a child is in care is a very difficult one in his or her life, something we must not forget. The child is coming out of difficult circumstances and we do not know how that care transfer might have taken place. It might have been very difficult. The separation is huge. I am aware from talking to social workers involved in this area of how hard it is, even though the special care order might be in place for the child's own protection. Last year I spoke in the House about a mother who had approached me for help with her troubled teenaged son who was threatening her and her younger children in the home. She had gone to the social work team in Galway but it was completely over-stretched at the time. It had not returned her call for more than two weeks. She was in a really bad situation but by the time the youngster was met and dealt with, it was also a difficult one for him. It is a bad experience in the first place and we must examine some of the ways by which we can make it better.

The children concerned are aged between 11 and 17 years and quite capable in terms of competency. We must listen to the voice of the child. The Bill does not address clearly the issue of the child's statutory right to automatic representation in the making of a special care order. Barnardos, for example, states the Bill is unclear regarding the child's right to representation and fails to give him or her an automatic statutory right to representation either through having party status in proceedings or through the appointment of a guardian ad litem. The care agencies and I seek clarity on this point. Statutory automatic representation for the child is very important, as is legal representation, if he or she is old enough to request it, and the provision of an independent person to act in his or her best interests.

There are concerns about the limited nature of the capacity of the guardian ad litem under the legislation. Under section 21 of the Child Care Act 1991, the guardian ad litem is a person assigned by a court to represent the wishes, feelings and interests of a child who is the subject of special care proceedings. The appointment of a guardian ad litem is at the discretion of the court. However, this is contrary to practice in Northern Ireland, England and Wales, where a guardian ad litem is automatically appointed in care cases. The appointment of a guardian ad litem only happens if the court is satisfied that it is necessary in the interests of the child and justice to do so. The proposed amendment made in the Bill, in section 2(b), allows the guardian ad litem to instruct a solicitor if one is appointed by the court. Although this is a welcome amendment, the main problem with it is that the appointment of the solicitor to the guardian ad litem is in the hands of the court which has sole discretion in the direction of the appointed solicitors.

A number of care agencies, including Barnardos, believe that if the guardian ad litem is appointed by the court, they should be able to direct their solicitor free from interference from a third party, just as any other participants in the proceedings are permitted to do. It is their opinion that unreasonable restrictions on the guardian ad litem that do not apply under the legislation to the other parties will weaken the protection for children and must be revised before the Bill is passed into law. I hope the Minister of State will examine this point very carefully. The agencies are concerned that restrictions placed on the guardian ad litem will affect their ability to represent properly and fully the best interests of the child during legal proceedings and undermine the level of importance of this function for the child.

All of us are working to give the child in special care a better experience and ensure their voice is heard. The vision for which we should strive is one where we hear the authentic voice of the child in difficult circumstances. I concur with what other Senators said, that we should examine removing the word "detention" and see it as a welfare provision. There is also the important issue of aftercare, for which we have seen the need in other cases such as the Monageer case and in the Ryan report, in which regard people in institutional care had terrible after effects when there was little, if any, after-care. I urge the Minister of State to place the provision of aftercare on a statutory footing. That should be the goal of a good Bill in this area.