Mick Clifford: State is failing many children in its care

The birth had taken place in a mother and baby unit, but the mother had left the unit without her infant baby. 

Throughout her young life the girl, who is now a teenager, lived with two foster families and when the relationship with the second foster family broke down she was moved to a facility run by a homeless charity.

Her teenage years have been chaotic. She has engaged in “significant risk-taking behaviour which included meeting males that she had met online”. 

She has made allegations of rape, being drugged, and assaulted. She has absconded from the facility on a number of occasions.

The judge, who was hearing an application for a care order for the girl, didn’t hold back: “I am incandescent with rage but now I despair,” he said.

There are no words, no words. It simply can’t continue.

But it does continue. And there is no sign that it won’t continue long into the future.

The above is taken from one of the 70 cases which feature in the latest
Child Law Project report. 

The project involves a reporter sitting in on family law cases concerning children. 

These cases are in camera for very good reason. But for the last 12 years anonymised reports are collected and presented through the Child Law Project.

This is designed to give as much access as possible to the administration for justice but it also provides a window into a world that is alien to most of us. 

A perusal of the cases is profoundly depressing. What emerges are snippets of lives that are being ground down before they can ever get going.

If you happen to walk on a beach this summer cast an eye at the small children digging sand, running forward and back to the shore, laughing and crying, all under the watchful eye of a parent or two. 

Parents of older or adult children may well view such scenes bathed in nostalgia, remembering their own offsprings, summer rites of passage, their struggles as newish parents.

Children growing up with a chance

For the greater part all these children are growing up with a chance. 

They may be fortunate to have a stable family background, a safe and snug harbour, in their formative years. 

There may be health, financial, or other issues bearing down on the home, but not such that their childhood would be permanently blighted. 

There could be, for some, issues that surface or evolve during those tender years but will remain unresolved into adulthood, when, with luck, the past can be negotiated if not resolved. 

But most of them will have a chance of reaching adulthood in one piece in order to have a shot at making the most of life.

You simply could not say the same for those who feature in the Child Law Project.

These children are expected to make it through their young years in the kind of circumstances most of us find difficult to imagine. 

More often than not their parents simply can’t cope; some have medical or psychological difficulties, others may be in prison or deceased. 

The vast majority of these children, around 90% of the roughly 5,500 in care, are lucky enough to be placed with foster parents.

Sometimes, though, as revealed in the Child Law Project, this does not work out. 

Fostering any child is freighted with potential difficulties which many heroically overcome.

But the range of problems that some children carry is just too much for some foster families to handle.

All of that leads to the State having to step in and parent these children. 

It is an awesome responsibility, but a question arises as to whether the State can be as negligent of the child’s needs as any parent might have been. 

Look through the window of the Child Law Project into a world where judges are repeatedly expressing frustration, anger and despair over the State’s care of its sons and daughters.

One court report noted an occasion when there were 24 cases before a judge concerning the failure of Tusla to appoint a social worker to a child. 

On another day there were 80 such cases. A child, most likely with serious needs or issues, is thus being left without any professional guidance in the care of the State. 

A high court judge is reported as describing the lack of special care beds for children as “a tsunami about to reach shore and nothing is being done”.

Those at the frontline do make huge efforts to contribute to this state parenting. 

One case involved a boy who is facing criminal charges. He has been in state care since soon after birth. 

His mother is serving life in prison, his father deceased. He has been through numerous placements. 

He is now a teenager prone to violent behaviour towards care staff.

At the time of the court hearing he was living in a one bedroom apartment and was about to start work and had got some guidance from a grandmother. 

“There had been no physical assaults in the last four to five weeks which was quite a contrast from his previous position,” the report states, the hearing ending on a hopeful note.

At a subsequent hearing the court was told his placement had broken down and he had spent the previous night in a hotel. 

His mother was brought to the court from prison and she wanted to help. 

The boy was to turn 18 a few months later. He could beat the odds. 

Some have, but most don’t and end up with stunted lives, some of which include pathways to prison, and sometimes early deaths. 

All of this after being parented through the early straits of life by the State.

Ultimately, reports like the Child Law Project open a window that invites change through compassion, a sense of duty, a realisation that future lives are being gambled with, not to mention the opportunity to tot up in cold monetary terms the huge costs being mortgaged for the future.

Yet change is highly unlikely. The government of the day is responsible for the allocation of resources but the failures run much deeper than that. 

No party will be campaigning in the next election to transform how we care for children in state care. 

There will be no great debate on the damage being done, the failure to cherish these children in a manner befitting an alleged fully developed country. 

Politicians campaign on what voters want. 

Generally, the attitude to this scandal is to wantonly ignore that such a twilight world of child rearing actually exists.