According to a research by the Child Law Project, the government lacks planning, strategy, and policy on child safety, reports RTE.
Over the course of the previous three years, the agency that has been investigating and documenting judicial childcare cases has accumulated results.
As evidenced by the organization’s several reports, the courts have placed more emphasis on the dearth of suitable care places for kids at that period, reports RTE.
Additionally, there have been more and more cases when experts, including members of the judiciary, have voiced their dissatisfaction and worry about children becoming lost in the system.
“Serious cracks” are apparent in the State’s approach to children, according to Dr Maria Corbett, CEO of the Child Law Project.
The Child Law Project has stated that “there remains no whole-of-government strategy on child protection,” despite applauding the Department of Children’s creation of an interagency group on vulnerable children, reports RTE.
It has also been noted that there is no plan in place to implement the “legal and policy changes necessary” to establish a new high-support care placement model for children with complex needs and those who are vulnerable to human trafficking or exploitation.
This study “shines a light” on a care system that is “creaking at the seams” and that “rising judicial concern about the absence of appropriate care placements” is what Special Rapporteur on Child Protection Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, who will introduce the report later, stated.
“This report sounds the alarm: some of Ireland’s most vulnerable children are falling through the cracks. The key question now is how the State will respond,” she said, reports RTE.
The Child Law Project conducted a study that looked at a normal day in court, and the results are included in the report.
Throughout the 24 districts that comprise the District Court, the project team visited 38 court locations, reports RTE.
A picture of a court system under extreme pressure was painted by their discovery that, in the majority of these courts, childcare matters were being handled alongside other cases on often packed lists.
Child protection cases were “squeezed into overloaded case lists and heard alongside family, licensing, and criminal matters, despite a legal requirement that they be heard separately” in more than 70% of regional courts, according to Carol Coulter, executive director of the Child Law Project, reports RTE.
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