Out-of-hours social work services for children in need of protection are “systemically inadequate”, an audit of garda child-protection cases has found.
Private foster-care company Five Rivers was used as the de-facto out-of-hours child-protection service by many gardaí, the audit found.
A significant number of the more than 5,400 cases of children removed from parents or guardians by gardaí between 2008 and 2015 occurred outside the normal working hours of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency.
Gardaí complained of a lack of social-worker service out of hours, beyond Dublin and Cork. And where there was provision, it was systemically inadequate, often under-resourced and social workers did not have access to children’s case files.
Since 2016, the company has been contracted by Tusla to provide out-of-hours placements outside Dublin and Cork. No gardaí could give detailed information about the company, nor explain the legal basis on which the children were transferred.
The audit found, while there was no criticism of Five Rivers, there was a pattern of refusal by the company to take in children with challenging behaviour, creating “a significant and troubling gap in the child-protection infrastructure in Ireland”.
The children ended up being brought to a local hospital to wait for Tusla services to reopen. In some cases they were returned to the person from whom they had been removed.
The audit report said its results suggested an absence of “a comprehensive and unified system” with information on children and families, to which all Tusla social workers should have access.
Gap in support
It found there was a gap in support for gardaí, principally from Tusla. And there were serious weaknesses in garda procedures for managing what happened after a child was removed from home.
Where Tusla provides no service, private providers are under no statutory obligation to take a child deemed too difficult or problematic, the audit found.
Gardaí were critical of the out-of-hours service provided. One garda was highly critical of a case involving a family that moved from one Tusla area to another. Because of the move, they had to be reassessed and were on a waiting list. Despite repeated notifications of concern from a charity involved with the family, Tusla took no action, the garda said. Eventually, gardaí were called to the house by the charity because the mother was unconscious from alcohol and in charge of an 18-month-old child. Gardaí removed the child under their emergency powers.
“It shouldn’t have got to a point where I had to go in there, take a child from a screaming mother, when the social workers had been involved,” the garda told the audit. He said the mother then took an overdose and ended up in hospital and the children remain in care. The audit report said the garda was emphatic that Tusla delays were due to “chronic under-resourcing”.
Some gardaí also complained that some social workers delayed contacting them until close to the end of their working day to force garda intervention, because it was easier than going to court.
Gardaí also said garda stations were “completely inappropriate and unsafe environments” for children. Hospitals were used as places of safety when no alternative could be found, but they were already busy and hospital staff were overstretched.
One garda described an out-of-hours social worker in the greater Dublin area as “disengaged, disrespectful, unprofessional and attempting to avoid responsibility”. In another case, a garda said he was told by a social worker that a child from a different Tusla area was “not their problem”.
And in a third case, a garda complained of “repeated obstruction by the designated out-of-hours service,” which resulted in a child opting to return to a parent from whom she was removed for alleged physical abuse. “This was done with the consent of social worker,” the garda said.
The audit found that, combined with “the general absence of training in child protection among members of the Garda, children are placed in a situation where they are at high risk of further traumatisation following section 12 removal”.
