Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 41: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if she will guarantee that she will put in place the necessary resources and supports to social services in advance of the introduction of mandatory reporting legislation. [40382/11]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I launched the Children First: National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children on the 15th July, 2011. The Guidance deals with the recognition, reporting and management of child safety concerns. It sets out a number of key messages relating to the duty to protect children. Among these are that the safety and welfare of children is everyone's responsibility, that children will have safer lives where everyone is attentive to their well-being and that people who work with children across a range of areas understand their responsibility for safe practice and the reporting of concerns. The Guidance sets out specific protocols for HSE social workers, Gardaí and other front line staff in dealing with suspected abuse. The scope of Children First extends beyond the reporting of suspected abuse. It emphasises the importance of multi disciplinary, inter-agency working in the management of such concerns. Key to this is the sharing of information between agencies and disciplines in the best interests of children and the need for full co-operation to ensure better outcomes.

My Department is finalising legislative proposals to make compliance with the Children First Guidance a statutory obligation. The legislation will reflect a broad based approach to compliance with obligations extending beyond reporting to one of safeguarding children at risk and the objective will be to ensure the greater protection of children by strengthening the existing system for reporting and responding to suspected child abuse.

Putting Children First on a statutory footing was a key recommendation of the Ryan Report and went hand-in-hand with other recommendations including the commitment to recruit an additional 270 social workers. These posts were exempted from the public service recruitment moratorium and will significantly strengthen the capacity of the state's child protection and family support services.

It is also important to recognize that the original Children First Guidelines were in place for over a decade and as such are not new in terms of the responsibilities placed on organisations working with children. In this regard, it should be emphasised that there are already very significant resources in place to support the implementation of Children First. In the case of the HSE and An Garda Síochána, the two statutory agencies with particular responsibilities for the assessment and investigation of child welfare and protection concerns, Children First forms an integral part of their existing operations and practices. For example, the HSE has in place a network of personnel to provide training, information and advice on the implementation of Children First. It is currently delivering a programme of information and training on the new Guidance across the country. It recently published a Child Welfare and Protection Practice Handbook for all its staff in order to achieve consistency and Children First compliance across all its authorities.

The consistent implementation of the Children First Guidance across all sectors working with children is a high priority for Government. In this context my Department is chairing an Inter Departmental Committee to oversee progress in implementing the Guidance across Government. The new revised Guidance, together with the introduction of legislation, is designed to heighten societal awareness of the importance of safeguarding children. The difference is that compliance with the Guidance will became mandatory. While this may give rise to an increase in the number of child protection referrals to the statutory authorities it will be equally important for the HSE, as part of its ongoing reform programme, to ensure that its services are re-balanced with an emphasis on primary prevention and family support for child welfare cases and interventions, including assessment of current risk, where child protection concerns are evident.