Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Children First Act 2015, which was fully commenced in December 2017, provides for a number of key child protection measures, including raising awareness of child abuse and neglect, providing for mandated reporting of child protection concerns and improving child protection arrangements in organisations providing services to children.

The Act places specific obligations on particular organisations that provide ‘relevant services’ to children and young people, including a requirement to keep children safe from harm while they are using the service, to carry out a risk assessment and to develop a Child Safeguarding Statement (CSS). This is a written statement that sets out the service provided and the principles and procedures in place to ensure, as much as possible, that a child or young person using the service is safe from harm. The types of organisations and services to which these statutory obligations apply are set out in Schedule 1 to the Act.

Providers of relevant services are obliged to provide a copy of their CSS on request to Tusla, a parent or guardian of a child availing of the relevant service or to requesting members of the public. Tusla has established a Child Safeguarding Statement Compliance Unit (CSSCU) to support the implementation of this provision. CSSCU maintains a register of non-compliance for service providers who fail to provide a copy of their CSS to Tusla when requested to do so. Members of the public with concerns about Child Safeguarding Statements can bring these concerns to the attention of the CSSCU.

Also under the Act, mandated persons are required to report child protection concerns at or above a defined threshold to Tusla. The Act defines harm as assault, ill-treatment, neglect or sexual abuse, and covers single and multiple instances. Mandated persons are people who have contact with children and/or families and who, because of their qualifications, training and/or employment role, are in a key position to help protect children from harm. The list of mandated persons is set out in Schedule 2 of the Act and it includes teachers, health care professionals and persons employed as managers of homeless provision or emergency accommodation facilities.

The Act operates side-by-side with the non-statutory obligations provided for in Children First: National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children 2017. These guidelines have been in place since 1999 and were fully revised and published in October 2017 to include reference to provisions of the Act.

The Children First National Guidanceoutlines that all organisations working with children and young people should create a culture of safety that promotes the welfare of children and young people availing of their services. All organisations working with children and young people should develop and put in place specific policies and procedures to create a safe environment, for example, around reporting child protection concerns, recruiting and managing staff and child safeguarding awareness and training.

It is the responsibility of each Government Department to ensure that children and young people are kept safe while accessing services provided or funded by them. The Children First Act provides for each Government Department to prepare a Sectoral Implementation Plan, which sets out the programme of measures either in place or planned to ensure compliance with Children First legislation and Guidance. These plans apply not only to that Department but also to any organisation providing a relevant service to children and receiving funding from the Department in that regard.

Together, the Children First legislation and Guidance set out the obligations of relevant services to prevent, as far as practicable, deliberate harm or abuse to the children availing of their services. While it is not possible to remove all risk, organisations should put in place policies and procedures to manage and reduce risk to the greatest possible extent. Tusla has developed helpful resources on statutory obligations as well as safeguarding best practice for organisations working with children and young people. These are available on their website.