Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I am pleased we have finally reached the Seanad stage of this Bill. It seems to have been a long time since we first came into the Chamber to discuss the issue of Children First. None of us could ever disagree with the purpose of this Bill which is to make further and better provision for the care and protection of children, including raising awareness of child abuse and neglect, to provide for reporting and management of child protection concerns and to improve child protection arrangements in organisations providing services to children. As the Minister said, the Bill will operate side by side with the existing non-statutory obligations provided for in Children First. One of the things we must do is assess this Bill against that statement of purpose.

On Part 2, the Bill is providing for relevant services to ensure that each child is safe from harm while availing of that service, to carry out a risk assessment and the development of a child safeguard statement. Part 3 deals with mandatory reporting, which is something that has been controversial. It does however provide the safeguard for all concerned that information shared with the mandated by person by the Child and Family Agency during the course of an assessment shall not be disclosed to a third party by that mandated party unless it is done in accordance with the law or where the disclosure is authorised in writing by the Child and Family Agency. Any person who fails to comply with this provision is guilty of an offence.

I welcome in Part 4 the establishment of the Children First inter-departmental implementation group and welcome further, as I understand it, that the ISPCC and Childline have agreed to work with the Department in supporting developments in the area of child protection. This will include exploring the enhanced use of technologies to assist with the statutory roll-out of the Children First Bill.

On some of the commentary on the Bill, it has been broadly welcomed, as stated by Senator van Turnhout. However, some campaign groups and Opposition members, including Senator Leyden today, have voiced concerns over the lack of sanctions in the legislation. I note the comments of the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald. She said the law aimed to make best safeguarding practice the cultural norm for anyone working with children. She stated that our focus was on who was mandated to report safety concerns in the Bill, which is in accordance with international best practice. She said she believed it struck the correct balance in achieving high quality reporting with high substantiation rates while avoiding overwhelming the child protection system with inappropriate reports. This is a key criticism of the operation of mandatory reporting in other countries. Senator Leyden said a lack of sanctions for those who fail to report cases is a watering down of the legislation. While it is something which should be kept under review, it is important that we have do not have a culture of fear among those who work with children but rather a culture of concern. My concern would be that were we to introduce sanctions, we would have serious over-reporting which would overload the system and make it inoperative. However, I ask the Minister to keep the matter under review.

Mandatory reporting has been widely accepted in other countries, particularly the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. While research has indicated that legislation for mandatory reporting has resulted in significant increases in cases being reported, more substantiated cases of abuse have come to light as a result. There are difficulties within the HSE child protection services to take into account. The increase in reporting, which will occur as a result of mandatory reporting, will put pressures on the child protection system. In 2012, the HSE reported that it received over 30,000 reports of child protection welfare concerns. Of these, 16,000 were deemed to need further assessment to be completed within 21 days and yet only 20% of these met the required target.

In 2012 over 13% of those children, approximately 785, had no care plan and of 6,332 children in care, more than 8.1% were without an allocated social worker. Strides have been made in the appointment of social workers and I understand that there are 193 additional social work posts, recruitment for which has been achieved or is under way. There are several factors that must be in place to ensure that mandatory reporting will work effectively and will not result in a system which would be unable to function. These include, well-defined guidelines of reporting thresholds and adequate resourcing and the recruitment and training of additional social workers. We need support structures, such as information technology and systems, comprehensive training for front-line staff, support information and training for designated persons, public education and the implementation of an efficient system of intake screening and assessment of reported cases. The Irish Association of Social Workers noted that there was a lack of resources leading to a crisis driven service with a lack of early intervention and support for children in care and so forth.

We must ensure that we do not overload an already stressed system and if we are to effectively protect children the resources must be in place. It is good to note that in 2000 the number of cases reported to child protection services was just over 9,000. By 2009, the number of reported cases had almost tripled to more than 26,000 and the rate of substantiation was at 10% of those cases. As Senator van Turnhout has said, no level of child abuse is acceptable in any system. While I have no doubt that when mandatory reporting is introduced the numbers of reported cases will rise, if mandatory reporting discloses the abuse of even one child it is well worth it. Carl O’Brien reporting in The Irish Timesin September 2014, noted the volume of children reported as being at risk to social services had increased by 98% over the previous seven years, from 21,000 to 41,600 cases. He said "much of this was linked to increased awareness over child-protection issues and high-profile care scandals." That is something we must welcome as a society. We have gone from being a society that hid its children under the carpet and locked them up in institutions and threw away the key. Every additional case that is reported is a victory for child protection. However, budgets and staffing levels are nowhere near what is required to reflect the increased demands in our system. I welcome the efforts made in respect of funding but this has to be a priority for our society and Government.

I agree with Senator van Turnhout. I ask the Minister to take very seriously her amendment on the chastisement of children. I agree that the physical chastisement of children, whether anything from a light slap to a “clip” across the ear is not acceptable in any civilised society.