Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to congratulate Deputy Jim Daly on being made a Minister of State. Cork has had a good week. I wish him well and advise him that we will be critical friends to him in his role as Minister of State.

I support the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill and congratulate Senator Freeman on it. She is a woman who really knows what she is talking about in this area. In that regard, we would do well to listen to her and to take note of what she is proposing and advising. The co-signatories to this Bill, Senators Marie-Louise O'Donnell and Craughwell, also bring experience and knowledge to this area.

Children and young people being incarcerated in adult mental health settings is simply not acceptable. A change to this situation is urgent and overdue. Reputable bodies like the Mental Health Commission, the Children's Rights Alliance and the Ombudsman for Children support the call for the ending of the current unacceptable situation in which significant numbers of children and young people - a total of 95 in 2015 - with serious mental health issues are admitted to adult psychiatric inpatient units. These children and young people are being detained, sometimes voluntarily, with adults who also have significant mental health issues. One does not need to be a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker to know this is not good enough for some of our most fragile, troubled and sensitive children. That is why I am supporting this Bill. While I am clear and unequivocal in my support for this Bill, I believe that Senator Freeman and others should, as the Bill progresses, look at some of the practical implementation issues raised by the Department of Health and by Lucena's CAMHS consultants in their submission to the Seanad's public consultation which is currently under way.

This evening I would like to briefly put this Bill, focusing on the mental health and support of our children, in context. Children in Ireland today face many challenges as they grow and develop. Approximately 130,000 children live in consistent poverty; 1,200 children live in direct provision; Traveller infant mortality is 3.6 times higher than for the rest of the population; 170 children have been waiting more than a year for mental health services; 56% of LGBTI children have self-harmed; and 2,500 children live in emergency accommodation. This Bill rightly focuses on the unacceptable practice, which is part of the current hugely inadequate mental health system for children and adults, of detaining and incarcerating children and young people in adult mental health units due to a lack of alternatives.

On 29 June next, the Seanad Public Consultation Committee, of which Senators Freeman and Devine and I are members, will begin to examine the Irish mental health service for children and young people in depth. The committee received a record number of submissions, including from children who were directly affected, their often distraught parents, as well as from key organisations and academics.We look forward to hearing directly from people, especially those directly affected, namely, the children, the young people and their families. Tonight, however, Members should also consider the effects of wider public policy failures on children's lives and on their mental health, well-being and ability to flourish. There are many policy interdependencies that affect children adversely and I will focus on a few of them tonight.

On the issue of housing and its failures, 2,500 children are living in emergency accommodation at present. The former Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, set the target of 1 July as an end-date for children living in emergency accommodation. On listening to the new Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, talking this week about managing expectations in reaching the Government's targets, it seems likely that this deadline will be missed. Let us just think about the anxiety levels among those children living in such conditions. They have nowhere to play, to do homework or to cook a family meal, as well as no permanence or certainty, no long-term school place or community and no chance to make the friends who support one for life, as we all did. These friendships, family and community are critical for positive child development. As part of the framework for mental health and children's well-being, we must address housing as a matter of urgency.

We are also aware of the sky-high rates of mental ill-health among Traveller children and young people. The Traveller suicide rate is six times higher than that of the general population and according to Pavee Point, it accounts for 11% of all Traveller deaths. Suicide for Traveller men is seven times higher and most common in Traveller boys and men aged 15 to 25. We need to know when their housing crisis, which predates the one engulfing us all, will be addressed and their housing needs met to address the off-the-scale mental ill-health in that community.

We need to address the needs of the 1,200 children living in direct provision and the impact of such a life on their mental health. We need to consider the policy failure in this regard and the impact on children. We also need to consider policy failures for children and young people with disabilities, who experience very high rates of mental ill-health. The fact is that such children often fall between the silos of disability on the one hand and mental ill-health on the other, often getting support from neither system.

We need to consider the policy failures of our children leaving care and the impact that has on their mental ill-health. While some positive announcements have been made on after-care, which I hope are realised, too many children at risk await the allocation of a social worker and there is still no 24 hour, seven days a week cover.

Let us consider our failure to progress the public alcohol Bill strongly advocated by my Civil Engagement colleague, Senator Black. This was shamefully held up in this House, despite knowing as Members do how alcohol abuse by parents and carers causes such harm to children and to their mental health and well-being. The Government failed to act on the evidence put forward by its own Department of Health and lacked the courage to stand up to the powerful alcohol industry, again to the detriment of our children's safety and mental health.

Our levels of child poverty and our failure to act is shameful. I hope that the new Minister with responsibility for employment and social protection will act on the report that was published last week on helping lone parents return to work in order that they can support their children. Members should consider how educational policy failures have an impact on children in general, and on LGBTI children in particular. According to the former Minister's report last year, twice as many children in this population self-harmed, three times as many attempted suicide and four times as many experienced extremely severe stress, anxiety or depression.

I have a clear vision of what an Ireland that cherishes her children would look like. Each child would be a wanted child, with those of childbearing age having access to timely sex education and accessible and free contraception. We would have a family support programme like the Sure Start programme in the UK, with universal supports and early intervention easily available on each child and parent's doorstep, especially supports that focus on children's early days, weeks and years, when so much happens developmentally. We would have a network of publicly-funded early education and child care and flexible working as a right for the parents of young children. We would have playgrounds and child-friendly places in every community, safe roads in the community in order that children can play outside and walk to school, schools open all year around with breakfast clubs so that no child need face the school day on an empty stomach, free school meals, after-school clubs, holiday play schemes and a welfare programme in every school, primary and secondary. There also would be accessible and free counselling, not just career guidance, as part of every secondary school, as well as counselling and welfare supports as part of every third level institution, particularly targeting young people in transition as they enter and leave. These are not pipe dreams. Such supports are commonplace in other countries across Europe and in places poorer than Ireland. I fought for this in the UK. My family had these supports available to us when I raised my children in a poor north London borough. I imagine that they have now, sadly, been dismantled by Tory cuts.

I too fully support the proposal in Sláintecare to ensure that mental health services in general and for children and young people in particular need to be adequate to the task and that the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services, CAMHS, and others have the resources and the means to support children's mental health and well-being. Moreover, by also considering wider public policy on housing, Traveller accommodation, direct provision, disability, social welfare and other issues, we can prevent children getting ill in the first place. Our CAMH service should be a preventative and generalist one with greater focus on talking therapies including free and accredited psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, family therapy and art therapy, as well as community supports. I question whether it is necessary for it to be psychiatry-led. Medication and incarceration should be the very last resort and we should instead be understanding, cherishing, supporting and loving these, our most troubled and fragile children. The last place they should be is in an adult unit. We should do much more to make sure that they never get there in the first place, by doing all of the things specific to mental health but also generally in the community.

I thank Senator Freeman for bringing forward this measure and I heartily support it.