Judge's letter and Child Law Project report prompt calls for investment in services
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A call has been made for investment in services for children in care and young adults who have left the care system, following the latest volume of the Child Law Project reports.
The reports, published on Monday, highlight issues including recruitment and retention issues in relation to social work staff, children being placed far from their families, and vulnerable children being put in unregistered emergency settings.
A letter written by now-retired district court judge Dermot Simms was included in the publication. It warned that the State could face claims “arising out of its failure to comply adequately with its duty of care and statutory duty” to children in care.
Irish Aftercare Network communications officer Neil Forsyth said Mr Simms’s reference to between 120 and 130 children placed in emergency accommodation settings “reminds me of the crisis in the sector in the early 1990s when there were a lot of children on the streets and in B&B accommodation.”
He said the State needs to “keep pace with the level of need out there”, adding that the hundreds of children who will leave State care in the next few years will “have nowhere to go because the private rental sector which used to be open to those young people is now totally and utterly closed”.
He said: “We are looking at an increased number of young people facing homelessness.
“There needs to be a massive investment in residential services so that young people have services. There has been an over-reliance on private residential care and that is not the way to go.”
In its pre-budget submission, Empowering People in Care (EPIC), calls for investment for the sector, and adds that the cost-of-living and housing crises are impacting on children in care and those who have left care.
The organisation is calling for investment for Tusla to tackle shortages of social work staff and also wants investment in residential care.
Children’s Rights Alliance CEO Tanya Ward says the reports show “how the chronic issues of recruitment and retention of social workers/specialised staff, the strain on residential and foster placements and the ongoing housing crisis can cause even further disruption and instability to the lives of the most vulnerable children”.
She added: “Responding to the concerns raised in the reports, will require a cross-government approach to developing solutions that can adequately address the complexity of these cases.”