Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Under the Child Care Act 1991, responsibility for the management of the child welfare and protection system rests with the Health Service Executive, HSE. With regard to the specific case raised by the Senator, officials from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs contacted the children and family services of the HSE prior to this debate for the most up-to-date position. The HSE has indicated it will endeavour to contact the father involved during next week, that is, the week commencing 11 November 2013, and I will ask my officials to speak to staff in the service to highlight the urgency of the response the Senator believes this case warrants.

It is regrettable that there has been a delay in addressing this request but it brings into focus the serious pressures facing our child welfare and protection services and social work teams.

That is the reality of the situation. Child protection and welfare referrals to the HSE have nearly doubled since 2007, from 23,618 in 2007 to 40,187 in 2012. There is often focus on individual cases in the media and elsewhere, but the overall number of neglect and child abuse cases of concern being referred to the services stands at more than 40,000 in 2012. That will probably marginally increase to nearly 42,000 in 2013. There was a particularly sharp increase in referrals during 2012, from 31,626 in 2011 to 40,187 in 2012. I welcome that people are referring because they are concerned about children, but it puts pressure on the system and services. It means that people need to prioritise responses in terms of the more serious cases and make judgments all the time at the assessment point about what level of response they can give.

We re-launched the Children First guidelines in July 2011, and as a society we are working to create greater awareness of children who should be referred. Owing to the age and gender profile among staff, social work staff numbers are constantly in flux. There are 250 whole-time equivalent social work vacancies, including approximately 110 arising from maternity leave. That clearly creates pressures. There is considerable ongoing reform as well. Considerable work is being done within teams locally and nationally to manage the very assessments the Senator mentioned in this case to try to ensure a more timely response to child protection referrals or other issues the Senator raised about access and custody.

We have introduced, for the first time, new national standards for child protection services. The Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, is now involved in examining what is happening. We have extremely good reports from some areas. In other areas improvements remain to be made, but timely inspections are taking place for the first time.

I reassure the Senator about social work staffing. Clearly in the office she mentioned there is an issue with the number of staff available to deal with these kinds of cases. The current number of child and family social workers in post is 1,385 whole-time equivalents. This includes all 270 posts recommended by the Ryan report. Some 114 vacancies have recently been filled with a further 136 posts being filled, of which 51 have been accepted by candidates. We obtained a budget increase of €6.7 million to support child protection teams in the Estimate for 2014, rising to €12 million in a full year, which will allow for additional recruitment.

We will also publish the Children First Bill in the near future. I thank the Senator for raising this case and my staff have been following up on the details of it.