Written answers

Thursday, 17 January 2013

Department of Children and Youth Affairs

Child Protection Guidelines

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs in view of recently announced Child Protection Information System in the United Kingdom where instances of where children who may be at risk can be detected by with the help of an online monitoring system when they are presented to accident and emergency units in hospitals are recorded and monitored to assess risk and to lead to earlier intervention, if he has examined the UK proposals; if consideration has been given to a similar online system here; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2138/13]

Photo of Frances FitzgeraldFrances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Children First National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children, which I published in 2011, provides clarity and guidance for individuals and organisations in identifying and responding appropriately to child abuse and neglect. It also sets out what organisations that care for or work with children should do to ensure they are safe whilst in the care of the organisation. The Government has committed, as a priority, to the introduction of legislation to underpin Children First.

As regards the use of information technology in the children and family services, since taking office, it has been evident to me that there is a particular need to improve the quality and accuracy of information available from and within the HSE in relation to child protection services, together with a need to provide more timely and meaningful information. The introduction of the National Child Care Information System will help to greatly improve performance in this area. I am pleased to advise the Deputy that good progress is being made by the HSE with regard to the introduction of this system which is currently at contract stage.

The 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. A first step was to develop agreed and consistent definitions and business processes across all social work offices. In this regard, a national standardised business process has been rolled out nationally. This will ensure that definitions used are consistent, for example, to ensure the number of recorded referrals relates to individual children and not families.

The introduction of the NCCIS is a high priority and will help to significantly improve the level, quality and accessibility of information in respect of Children and Family Services.

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