Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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Question 10: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of children who have been detained in residential care under High Court orders to secure their safety and welfare needs on the basis that they pose a serious risk to themselves and others during each of the past five years. [40369/11]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Special Care involves the detention on an exceptional basis of a non-offending child for his or her own welfare and protection in a Special Care unit with on site educational and therapeutic supports. The child's behaviour, and the risk of harm it poses to his or her life, health, safety, development or welfare is addressed in the care setting. Future care requirements are also explored.

There are three designated Special Care units in the country which are operated by the HSE under a single national governance arrangement. They are Ballydowd Young Peoples Centre (Dublin), Glean Alainn (Cork) and Coovagh House (Limerick).

The placing of a child in a Special Care unit is considered as a last resort, for as short a time as possible, and when other forms of residential or community care are considered to be unsuitable.

My Department is advised that, as of yesterday, there were a total of 14 children resident in the existing units. In relation to the number of children who have been detained in residential care during each of the past five years, I have asked the Health Service Executive for the information in question which I will forward to the Deputy.

The HSE has a four year plan to develop the National Special Care Service. In January 2011 the service came under the National Director. From January 2012 there will be 20 places available nationally, with an additional 14 places to be added within the next period, bringing the total number to 34 places. The new places will be on the same campus as the two high support units- Monaghan and North Dublin. This plan will allow children detained in special care to move from a special care unit to an open high support unit on the same campus with the advantage of staying in the same school and working with the same staff groups.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 11: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the extent to which she has available to her a full register of all children in residential, custodial or foster care; the extent to which she has oversight in all such situations with a view to ensuring that full protection and compliance procedures are in place and observed in all circumstances; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40292/11]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Under the Child Care Regulations 1995 the HSE is required to keep one or more registers in relation to children placed in care. The register holds personal information in respect of the child and his or her parents contact details, as well as details of the child's care placement. Currently, these registers are kept at local level. The registers are inspected by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) as part of their function. Up to now there has been no single national register of children in care.

A register of all young people in custody in the Children Detention Schools (CDS), Oberstown, Lusk, Co. Dublin is maintained and updated on a daily basis.

The National Child Care Information System (NCCIS) will be the central system supporting Social Work services. As a social work case management system, it will be used to record and store the case history of every child and other clients of the service. Management information will be derived automatically from the case management system. The aim of the NCCIS project is to identify and procure an easy to use technology solution to support this type of case recording and to automatically provide management information. The HSE estimates that the NCCIS will be at contract stage by mid 2012. This will be followed by a four month development stage, to be followed by a four month pilot roll out. On this basis, it expects that management data from the system will begin to be available from approximately mid 2013.

The implementation of the National Child Care Information System is an important element in ensuring nationally consistent approaches to the recording and management of information in order to support case management and national oversight. In addition, I believe the establishment of the Child and Family Support Agency in 2013 and associated reforms will represent a decisive shift towards achieving nationally consistent standards across all child protection services.