Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

Ba maith liom buíochas a ghabháil don Cheannaire, Seanadóir Muiris Ó Comáin, as ucht an cuireadh a thabhairt sé dom teacht roimh an Seanad inniú le haghaidh an díospóireacht tábhachtach seo faoi seirbhísí do clainne agus leanaí.

We are at the anniversary of this Government and while my Department of Children and Youth Affairs has a few months to go before it reaches that landmark, this week nonetheless presents an important opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved in the past 12 months and the outstanding challenges.

As I have stated previously in the Seanad, as the first ever senior Minister for Children and Youth Affairs I hope that in establishing a full Government Department I have managed to bring a seamless new approach to policy development and integrated service provision for children, with the ultimate objective of ensuring children are cared for and protected and that they have the best possible start in life. We must have this vision for Irish children if we want to achieve it. One of the key elements of this new approach is the enhanced focus on early intervention and family support. We must be proactive, not just reactive, in seeking to improve outcomes for children's lives and to identify and respond to potential risks facing children and their families. The return on such a strategy should be clear. It involves improving the lives of children and ensuring better opportunities and quality of life. This contributes to the long-term economic and social development of the State.

I wish to outline in more detail the rationale behind the enhanced focus on early intervention and family support that I am pursuing. First, it is about intervention in children's early years. Early intervention in children's lives and quality early childhood experiences are crucial to a child's emotional, cognitive and social development.

I recently attended a round-table OECD meeting on this topic in Norway. It was very interesting for me to hear the findings of longitudinal studies from around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and New Zealand. Many Senators will be familiar with the findings. We need to do more longitudinal studies in Ireland to highlight the benefits of investing in early years. At the round-table meeting, it was extraordinarily interesting to hear about the returns to the economies of their investments. Returns are between three and ten times the original investment.

The children subject to intervention, sometimes for as little as three hours per day, five days per week, are better able to avail of the educational opportunities offered to them. They commit fewer crimes and have fewer alcohol problems. They do better in education and are more employable. Longitudinal studies are becoming very clear on this. It was very interesting to hear the economists say intervention is an important economic contribution to the life of any country. It is not only good for children as it makes sense economically also.

The OECD's economic survey of Ireland claims that in order for Ireland to preserve its strengths in human capital, we should recognise the importance of pre-school education in having both a positive impact on later educational performance and an equity-enhancing effect. The case for intervention has been made very clearly.

There is no question but that Ireland has been behind other developed countries over the years in regard to our early years sector. Even in recent years, the roll-out of child care schemes has often been rooted in supporting labour-market activation. As a long-time campaigner for women's rights, I welcome the important role child care has played in supporting increased female participation in the workforce. However, for too long the focus has been solely on supporting parents and not on the quality supports needed for the development of the child. I am glad this important focus is receiving an increasing amount of attention.

Yesterday, I obtained Cabinet agreement for the development, for the first time in Ireland, of a national early years strategy. We have had a national children's policy but there was no particular focus on early years. I brought a memorandum to the Cabinet yesterday on this topic and received a very positive reaction thereto. I will work with other Departments to ensure we have a high-level policy and strategy that integrates and examines the services available for children from birth to six years. I will have a cross-departmental group working on this, including staff from my Department and the Departments of Education and Skills, Health and Public Expenditure and Reform, in addition to an expert group that will advise me on this matter. I want to prepare the strategy by the end of the year. This gives us an important opportunity to examine some of the key areas, some of which I mentioned. The literacy and numeracy strategy will be considered in conjunction with the Minister for Education and Skills, bearing in mind his very positive initiative in this regard.

Also considered will be the quality of early childhood care. It is not just a question of supplying a certain amount of care; it is also about the quality. Two programmes, called Aistear and Síolta, consider what happens to children in various child care settings and services, including child minding services.

We must also examine health. My liaising with the Department of Health will be very important because we need to consider the screening programmes available. I stated previously in the Seanad that the EU conference in Poland on children's health and screening concluded that one of every five to seven children will have difficulties with sight, hearing and speech and will need to be screened. It is very important that we identify at an early stage the needs of children and intervene earlier. The evidence is that if there is early intervention in regard to disability, the disability can lessen and be coped with better. That certainly makes sense.

There are some serious challenges in the area of health that require joined-up thinking. Some 25% of three year olds are obese or overweight. I was very shocked when I first heard that statistic. I found it hard to believe. The more I see the detail of the longitudinal study of children, the more I realise what a very serious challenge this presents for Irish society. It involves everybody. It is a matter of parental attitudes to food and exercise. There is much to be learned in this area and we need joined-up thinking to tackle it.

I visited a child care service just two weeks ago where I was told about a child of a year and three months who had to be weaned off crisps. I was also told about the difficulties very young children under two have in eating mashed potato because they have been brought up on types of food that are simply not good for them. A very caring woman looked after the children in question and was sharing with me her extreme concern over some of the eating patterns one sees in children under two. This is reflected in the longitudinal study that shows 25% of three year olds are obese or overweight. The same applies to nine year olds and, therefore, the problem features throughout the age range. We have serious work to do in this area.

We need to consider disadvantage and more targeted programmes for children who are under more pressures socially in a variety of ways. We also need to take the opportunity to have early child care services to involve parents more. Rather than having services where children are dropped off, we need to see the parents being engaged where appropriate and where they want to be involved. We are seeing more of this in the services. There are many opportunities available through current provisions but there is a significant opportunity to enhance what we are doing.

Recent years have seen some welcome changes. Senators will be very familiar with the universal free pre-school year scheme. There is a very high take-up rate. Some 95% of three to four year olds are participating and availing of a quality service. We can continue to improve the quality. We have an opportunity to take some of the steps about which I have been talking.

Protecting the universal free pre-school scheme has been a priority for me. I obtained an additional €9.8 million in funding to maintain the universal free year, which will see an increase of some 3,000 in the number of children participating in the programme next year.

My Department runs two other child care schemes. Several hundred million euro is being spent on child care at present. There are some places available now because of the economic downturn but it is a question of making those places accessible to children whose families need them most. With the new activation programmes and the changes the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, is introducing, I hope we will be able to link employment and training uptake initiatives to child care places to ensure child care will be available when families need it. Significantly subsidised child care places are provided to those in VEC courses or what were FÁS courses.

Last week, I launched a new scheme of capital funding for early childhood facilities to be spent during 2012. This is worth €6 million. There has not been a capital fund in this area for some years and I was pleased to be able to secure the funding. It is for remedial, maintenance and renovation works and equipment up to a value of €50,000 per project. This allows for continuing investment, albeit small, in projects that received capital funding over the years but which now need to be supported.

We need to look at working on developing the continuum of family services that are available in the community. Sometimes we take for granted the great wealth and broad range of services for children in families throughout the community. We have a vibrant voluntary sector, albeit under pressure because of finances, which provides a significant level of voluntary services for families and children. While I admire the voluntary spirit of those providing these services, perhaps the Government funding of them has been on an ad hoc basis. We need a more streamlined approach to ensure that the families most in need get the benefit of the range of services, for example, the many parenting courses we have throughout the country.

We have a number of different initiatives by a wide variety of groups, much of it of a very high quality. Many services are provided but the challenge is to build on them and support their integration with the statutory services, so that there is greater integration between the statutory and voluntary services. We need to see more inter-agency work. If that were to happen in a more focused way, we would have earlier identification of developmental problems, potential incidences of neglect and could respond more appropriately to them. We could be more proactive at an earlier stage. We do not have to reinvent the wheel but work remains to be done.

We have seen significant investment by philanthropic organisation in private projects. I pay tribute to Atlantic Philanthropy and the various other organisations which have invested significant sums of money in Irish children, and in developing services around the country and trying to improve outcomes for children. Much of this funding will cease in a number of years and in the period of transition from that funding, the integration of the lessons which have been learned from those pilot projects will be the key challenge. It will be very challenging. Examples of these pilot projects include the GDI in Tallaght, Youngballymun in Ballymun and Preparing for Life in north Dublin. Up to €60 million, which is an extraordinary figure, has been invested in these projects by the Department in conjunction with the philanthropic organisations. We must look at the evaluation reports from the projects and see that the lessons are learned and then how other organisations can learn from them.

We have another initiative, the National Early Years Access Initiative, which involves Atlantic Philanthropy, the Mount Street Club Trustees, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Pobail. There are various projects around the country, each of which seeks to deliver innovative inter-agency responses to improving participating in quality early years care, education and development. On Monday I was in Athlone to launch one of these projects, Tus Nua, which serves the Longford Westmeath area. It is very encouraging to see the quality of the work and what is actually happening for children when they attend these facilities. High quality work is being done with them individually in these child care setting. This work is very effectivein helping children understand their identity, work on projects. It also helps them understand various concepts

A common goal of these projects has been a focus on evidence based practice and ongoing project evaluation for the purpose of advising future policy. That is essential, as everybody would agree. I see a very important role for NGOs working with statutory and community based organisation and giving families support.

The third key area is the reform of our child and family services. We have an ambitious agenda about delivering services in a new way. It involves moving child and family support services from the HSE to a new stand-alone agency, called the Child and Family Support Agency, which will be established by 2013. Under that reform agenda, we have got some additional funding for child and family services in 2012. Demand is very high in this area and there are serious financial deficits which will take a great effort to sort in the coming months and years. This year we have seen the creation of a dedicated budget subhead for child and family services, while management structures are currently being developed for the new agency, at national, regional and local levels. This will pave the way for the establishment of the new agency.

Change is not easy. We asked people to support us as much as possible. It will be a change for the workers who have been working in the HSE structure to move to a new agency but from my travels around the country the response has been very positive. People see it as a new era in child protection and a new opportunity to get these services right. It will not be done overnight. There is a considerable deficit in this area. I have to look to the high support areas and the report that was published in Ballydowd yesterday and the previous report that was published in Cork confirm this. I must admit openly there are serious issues, which need to be addressed, about the services which we offer to young people. We must go abroad for some services as we do not have them in this county. Mr. Gordon Jeyes, and the section dealing with child and family support services are working on this issue. We are working on a national policy that will support the development of these services nationally. It is very clear from the 15 or so reports on this area of child protection which have been published over the years that much remains to be done and there is need for early intervention services and the development of a targeted family support service. There is a range of other issues which I have outlined in my speech, which has been circulated, highlighting some of the key issues affecting children in families at the moment.

The abuse of alcohol is significant factor, in terms of the number of children coming into State care where alcohol is frequently cited as a key issue. Many young children, under five years, are coming into care because a family member is abusing drugs or alcohol. This is a national issue and we need to intervene to try to protect our children. The evidence from the longitudinal studies shows that young Irish people are drinking earlier and are drinking more than other European children. This is a real challenge for all of those who work in this area and is a major problem for families.

I will give some statistics on the numbers of children in care. Between 2006 and 2010, the number of children in care increased by 13% and since then there has been a further increase in 2011 from 5,727 to 6,160, an increase of 433 children, or 7%. This is in line with increases in comparable jurisdictions. Ireland has fewer children in care per 10,000 of the population than those of other jurisdictions. We need to do all we can to keep that figure as low as we can. The goal of our policy is to keep children at home and to support families by the measures I have outlined. The HSE agenda for child services, which was prepared by the child and family centre in Galway, highlighted the importance of health and social service provision built on the premise of a child remaining at home and being supported within the family and the local community. That is the goal of our work.

The HSE is also looking at assessment of risk and we need to conduct far tighter assessments of risk when families come to the attention of the services to ensure that the correct decisions are taken for families so that we do not have tragedies. I will be publishing the review group's report on the deaths of children in the past ten years, some of whom were known to the care services, were in care and were in after care.

That is being cleared legally but one of the features that stand out is the appalling early childhood experiences that many of those children had. Apart from the time those children came into care, the issues about their early lives and the quality of experiences many of those children had, some of which were already in the public domain, there are some very serious questions that arise about the experiences many of the children had as well as their experiences in care.

I am holding a referendum on the rights of the child this year, which I hope all Senators will support. It is about ensuring that the voice of the child is heard, that we look at the child's best interest and appreciate and understand that a child has rights by virtue of being a child. That referendum is about supporting proportionate means of intervention. As I have outlined clearly, the primary goal is to keep children within their families and if intervention is needed by the State to help some children, that intervention must be appropriate and proportionate.

I hope my statement to the House has provided Members with an understanding of the approach I am taking as Minister and, particularly, the enhanced focus I placed on early intervention and family support services. I see this year as a time when the focus will become much clearer and sharper as we develop the capacity and effectiveness of these services to ultimately improve outcomes for children by intervening earlier, through actively supporting families and promoting the protection and care of children in their home setting.

I thank the House for the opportunity for a debate on this important topic.