Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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343. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of children who have died in care during the years 2011 to date, including their ages and cause of death; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44063/15]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The death of any child or young person is a tragedy, and a profound loss for their families and carers. To all those affected, I wish to express my sincere sympathies. In order to identify learning about how to better address the needs of vulnerable children and families, the National Review Panel (NRP) was established in 2010 to review serious incidences and deaths of children in care. It is an independent body chaired by Dr Helen Buckley of Trinity College and its reports are published on the Tusla website.

The National Review Panel recently published its 2014 Annual Report of reviews of the cases of 29 children and young people, 26 of these children died, and a further 3 were involved in serious incidents:

-Nearly one third of these deaths were a result of natural causes, including congenital conditions;

-Very sadly, a further 8 children and young people died by suicide, 3 of whom were in care;

-Five children died in road traffic accidents and 2 died by homicide.

The Review Panel found that there was no case where either action or inaction on the part of the HSE or Tusla was a direct contributory factor in the deaths. However, as is the explicit purpose of this work, the Review Panel also found areas of historical deficits in practice and inconsistencies in service provision. These include providing timely access to a social worker; more clear evidence of parental capacity to change in social work assessments and earlier decisions to take a child into care. This Government’s establishment of a dedicated Child and Family Agency, Tusla, has already addressed some of these historical deficits. Government has provided additional funding to Tusla this year to significantly increase the number of social workers dedicated to working with these vulnerable children and families.

As a learning organisation, Tusla is committed to embedding the lessons of such reviews, and a number of relevant actions are currently underway to further enhance the response to vulnerable children and families such as:

-Meithealis an initiative to make best use of all early interventions to support families in a coordinated way and to best address childrens' needs;

-Tusla is developing an assessment model for social workers, to support evidence- informed assessment, greater consistency and enhanced practice in engaging families;

-New Threshold Guidancehas been introduced to ensure social work interventions are made in a proportionate and timely manner.

The information requested by the Deputy is represented in the following tables. All information included can be found in the National Review Panel Annual reports, published on the Tusla website.

Table 1: Care Status at Time of Death