Presentation to the Fine Gael Ard Fheis

Presentation to the Fine Gael Ard Fheis
                                                            30th March 2012

I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak this evening about child
protection in Ireland. Barnardos is an Irish charity, founded by Dr Thomas
Barnardo; born in Dublin near Dublin Castle. Barnardos' mission is to
challenge and support families, communities, society and government to make
Ireland the best place in the world to be a child, focusing specifically on
children and young people whose well-being is under threat. Barnardos is
celebrating 50 years of working with children and families in Ireland this year
and we have now over 40 community based projects across Ireland working in
some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country.

When discussing the whole area of child welfare and protection, I think it is
important to set the scene for children growing up in Ireland in 2012,
particularly in the midst of a recession. The recent census indicates that while
much about Irish society remains the same, there are key changes that mean
children have very different childhoods now than many of us had when we
were growing up.

Ireland’s population now is 4,581,269 (Census 2011). There were 1,206,527
children aged 0-18 years comprising over 26% of the population 1.
Some key trends shaping children’s lives and telling us of the family lives
children are experiencing include:
    • A continued shift in population growth towards commuter-belt areas and
       suburbs outside the major cities and towns since the last census results
       in 2006. 62% of the population now live in urban areas. Big population
       concentration is in Leinster
    • The make-up of the Irish population today is starkly different to anything
       seen in older Census reports, with more nationalities, languages and
       ethnicities than ever before. Ethnic diversity is now an established fact
       of Irish life; the number of non-Irish nationals increased by almost a
       third since the last census in 2006 and now account for 12 per cent, or
       544,360 of the population.
    • There are now far more same sex couples registering in the census,
       4000 in 2011 over just 150 in 1996.
    • There were 1,179,210 families in 2011, 12 per cent more than five years
       earlier.

1
    Central Statistics Office (2012) Census 2011, Preliminary Findings

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• The long-running trend of families having fewer children has continued
      although at a slower rate. The average number of children in each
      family in 2011 was 1.38, down from 1.41 in 2006. This was a less
      pronounced drop than those seen in censuses from 1991 to 2006. The
      number of families with four or more children has remained relatively
      stable over the most recent period. Interestingly, there was a 13%
      increase in the number of one-child families in 2011.
    • Marital families still account for the vast majority – 70 per cent – of all
      family units. Some of the biggest increases in family units were among
      husbands and wives with children who made up almost half of all
      families last year.
    • The proportion of people who are married remained stable at 37%
      between 2006 and 2011, although there was a 10% increase in the rate
      of marital breakdown 2.
    • The number of cohabiting couples is on the rise, but again at a slower
      rate than in previous years. There was an increase of 41% in the
      number of co-habiting couples with children between 2006 and 2011.
      There was also an increase of 14% in the number of children born to
      lone parents.

The census paints a very positive picture of an Ireland where families are still
strong although there is a much broader spectrum of how they are formed.
Internationally Ireland continues to be rated positively for children, one of the
happiest in Europe with UNICEF (2011), on a survey of young people aged
16-20, finding a 52% happiness rate and 29% alright 3. The recent Growing up
in Ireland (2009) indicates that 86% of 9-year olds considered that they ‘got on
well’ with their parents, an important endorsement of parenting from children
themselves - the majority of our children are doing well and readily say that.

However, there are children for whom Ireland is not a good place to grow up
in. Many children are suffering the ill effects of the recession; income
inequality is increasing with the average income of the top 20 per cent of
earners 5.5 times greater than those in the lowest 20 per cent 4. Children were
among the most exposed to consistent poverty when broken down by age with
8.2% of children (aged 0-17) continuing to live in consistent poverty in 2010
compared with just under 1% of over 65’s 5. And there are many children who
continue to suffer as a result of neglect and abuse.

2
  10% represents the proportion of those who are separated or divorced as a total of those who were
ever married.
3
  UNICEF (2011) Changing the Future – Experiencing Adolescence in Contemporary Ireland Part 1
Happiness, Dublin
4                                                                     th
  CSO (2011) EU SILC statistics as quoted in Irish Times article on 28 March 2012
5
  Barnardos (2011) Tomorrow’s Child in an Age of Austerity written by Brian Harvey

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Many of you know that there are families throughout Ireland who are
struggling. Many of you represent them at council and national level. Some of
these families live in chaotic circumstances and parents often face specific
challenges in caring for their children. These families need support to ensure
that they can meet their children’s physical, emotional and social needs.
Barnardos has long been a strong advocate for investing in prevention and
early intervention strategies that work directly with the child and their families,
preventing the onset of problems or tackling them before they become
entrenched. Indeed, in our own services this is the approach we take with the
development of key early intervention programmes such as Roots of Empathy
and Tus Maith. Roots of Empathy is an evidenced based programme that
reduces levels of aggression among school children while raising social /
emotional competence and increasing empathy. Tús Maith is an early year’s
programme that aims to prepare children for primary school by helping them
to develop the cognitive, emotional and social skills necessary for this
transition. Such approaches not only benefit the child and the family but have
significant societal benefits too. New research from NUI Maynooth recently
told us again that high quality parenting programmes improved both child
behaviour and parent’s mental health. The researchers found that while it
costs about €2,200 on average to deliver a programme per family, the health,
social and economic benefits are estimated to be worth €315,000 per family 6.

Child welfare and protection is a difficult and complex area of work. The
Roscommon (2010), Murphy (2009) and Ryan (2009) reports have shown
quite starkly that there are no easy or quick fixes for the challenges facing
many children and their families. The inquiries were into abuse and neglect in
different settings, in different decades but a key finding of each and every
inquiry tells us…The child as an individual was not heard, children as a
collective were ignored. Child welfare and protection professionals address
both the immediate difficulties facing children, and often the impact of
intergenerational disadvantage, poverty, social exclusion and troubled family
life that contributes to the challenges facing children and their parents. No
easy task. It is time-intensive and depends on the skills of the worker, the
resources in the community and on the quality of the relationship the worker
has with the child and family. From my own experience as a Social Worker in
the statutory services and in Barnardos I know it can also be rewarding work;
it holds the possibility to change children’s lives while there’s still time to make
a difference.

In December 2011, there were 6,160 children in the care of the State and 93%
of these had an allocated social worker and 90% had a written care plan in
place. We know that all children in State care need to have those two things in

6
  Furlong, M et al (2012) Behavioural and cognitive-behavioural group-based parenting programmes
for early-onset conduct problems in children aged 3 to 12 years, The Cochrane Library.

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place to even be in with any chance of remedying the challenges life has
thrown at them.

Some very significant inroads have been made recently to improve Ireland’s
child welfare and protection systems and the appointment of a Minister, the
establishment of a Department of Children and Young people are indeed big
and important steps here. I particularly welcome the establishment of the Child
and Family Support Agency and the legislative changes that are planned as
outlined by the Minister. This long term structural reform and vision is required
if we are to make sustainable improvements in protecting our children. It has
been proven time and again that short-term approaches and solutions
inevitably fail to adequately address the multiple levels of need in families
when it comes to child welfare and protection concerns. The new Agency
must have authority, must be appropriately resourced and accountable for its
actions and must have the support of all of us if it is to work.

Barnardos vision for children and young people is to ensure that every child
has local access to universal or prevention services and interventions like
quality health services, education including preschool and social amenities.
Children facing additional challenges should also have easy access to early
intervention services like educational supports, life skills supports and family
support programmes. And when prevention and early intervention isn’t
enough, children should have local access to a range of crisis welfare and
protection services including social work, fostering and residential care;
aftercare and homeless services; juvenile justice supports and mental health
programmes.

Essentially the child should move along a continuum of supports, increasing if
and when the needs of the child become greater. Delivering services in this
joined-up way needs joined-up thinking to coordinate information and services
across education, health, family support and child welfare and protection. It
means working to common assessment and referral frameworks so that all
staff across the country are recording the same information and singing from
the same hymn sheet, so to speak. Strong cooperation between service
providers at local level that are following national standards and policies is
fundamental to improving the lives of children and families. The political will to
fundamentally reform our child welfare and protection services has been
momentous; the continued will to see this through will be essential if we are to
truly put the past behind us and build a holistic, effective system that puts
children firmly at the centre of all its operations.

While the reform of our child welfare and protection system is of huge
importance, there is nothing in the next year or two that will have a more
profound effect on children’s lives in Ireland than the proposed Referendum
on children’s rights. The Referendum represents a once in a generation
opportunity to put to rest the legacies of our past and move Ireland into a new

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era where children are seen, heard and listened to. The consequences of
missing this opportunity or not using it to its fullest potential will be yet more
decades where children take a back seat in our society, where their welfare
and safety is put at risk because of constitutional anomalies that skew
thresholds of intervention and mean some children are not privy to the same
protection as others.

There will be no easy wins in this Referendum and it would be a mistake to
think that we do not need to work hard to ensure that people understand what
the Constitutional referendum on children’s rights will mean. Voters
particularly parents need to fully understand the issues and be reassured that
a Yes vote will not mean that children’s rights will in any way compromise
parents’ rights. We also need to quell fears that a Yes vote would mean that
the State will be able to take children away from families for spurious reasons
or for anything less than the child’s best interest. We are talking rebalancing
here not revolution…but the effects for the children and young people of
Ireland particularly those who need extra supports will indeed be significant.

What it will mean is that the best interest of children will be the primary
consideration in decisions affecting them. A recent report published by the
Children and Youth Programme in Galway highlighted that conflict between
the best interests of the child and the rights of parents was not the subject of
any of the complaints submitted to the Ombudsman for Children’s Office
between 2004 and 2008 7. Indeed, in a recent case, the Ombudsman for
Children’s Office report outlined the extraordinary lengths that a disabled
young person’s parents had gone to help him get the supports he needed to
achieve a dignified life. This is consistent with Barnardos’, and others’,
experience that parents are often the best advocates for vindicating their
children’s rights and the recognition of the importance of the family in the lives
of children that underpins many of the provisions in the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child. Inserting the principles of best interests of the child and
voice of the child into the Irish Constitution will not only strengthen children’s
rights in having a say in decisions affecting them but will also strengthen
parents’ ability to advocate to ensure their children’s best interests are
paramount in judicial and administrative decisions. In talking about hearing the
voice of the child Judge Catherine McGuinness stated in a case known as The
Baby Anne Case that all voices were heard but that of the child.

In relation to child welfare and protection, the Referendum on children’s rights
is essential to addressing current Constitutional provisions that can actively
prevent the State from intervening to protect children whose safety and lives
are at risk as a result of severe neglect and abuse. The Supreme Court’s
interpretation of the Constitution has consistently favoured the primacy to
parental rights rather than the best interests of the child. The Constitutional
7
 UNESCO Children and Youth Programme (2012) Children’s Rights and the Family: A Commentary
on the Proposed Constitutional Referendum on Children’s Rights in Ireland

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presumption that the welfare of the child is best protected within the family
unless there are “compelling reasons” why this cannot be achieved sets a very
high threshold for State intervention in family life 8. In practice, this prevents, or
creates a perception which prevents, the courts and child welfare and
protection services from looking at all the options necessary to protect a child
or to implement the decisions that would best meet the needs of the child. A
Constitutional amendment is needed to ensure that the courts can make
decisions based primarily on the best interests of children.

The amendment is also essential to ending the current discrimination by which
children of married parents who are in the care system are, in effect, ineligible
for adoption. There are a significant number of children currently in the system
for whom adoption would provide a second chance at being part of a family.
The high thresholds that currently exist mean that many are only being
approved for adoption just before their eighteenth birthday. This essentially
means that throughout their childhood they are not legally part of the foster
family they may have lived with since birth or a very young age. This can pose
many practical difficulties as they grow up. These children should have a right
to be recognised as part of a family that loves and cares for them as soon as
is practicably possible when it is clear that their birth parents will never be in a
position to provide this. This is not about fault: it is about the opportunity of
married parents to make a loving choice to place their child for adoption if they
are unable to raise them and it is about the child/young person nestling fully
into a family with all the joys, rows and issues that arise in all families.

A 2011 poll conducted by Stand Up for Children, echoing previous polls
conducted by Barnardos in 2006 and 2010, showed that 94% of people were
likely to vote on a Referendum on children’s rights and that almost 4 in 5
people would support it. However, the poll also indicated that there are still
some negative issues surrounding the Referendum, suggesting that people
still need convincing of the need for and importance of it. In the poll 2 in 5
people didn’t understand what the Referendum is all about although very few
thought there is no need for a Referendum on Children’s Rights at all 9. This
clearly shows that people are on side when it comes to children’s rights but
also the importance of explaining the implications of the Referendum explicitly
to people.

This is a complex and emotional area. There is no doubt that mistrust in the
organs of the State can create a barrier for people in accepting that in some
cases thresholds need to be lower to ensure children can be better protected.
It is essential that the new Child and Family Support Agency and the
legislative base for changes to adoption are progressed to a greater extent so
that all the implications of the Constitutional amendment on children’s rights
can be laid before the people clearly. Specifically the heads of Bills regarding
8
    Ibid
9
    Red C (Nov 2011) Poll on Referendum on Children’s Rights, for Stand Up For Children

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adoption should be published in advance of the Referendum to appease fears
and set out the criteria for adoption clearly. It is also important that all of us
standing behind this Referendum do everything we can to explain and
promote it. We must do everything in our power to ensure people see the
importance of its provisions for children in Ireland. A Constitutional
amendment on children’s rights isn’t just another piece of paper, it is
statement of intent and a solid promise which can be used by children and
their advocates to challenge any system that fails to uphold their rights. It
gives a voice to the child citizens of Ireland who have been voiceless for too
long.

There is no doubt that we are entering a new era in child protection in Ireland.
It has been a long and hard road to travel. Too many children have suffered
as a result of our failure to provide adequate care and protection for them. The
momentum behind the reforms taking place with the Child and Family Support
Agency and the upcoming legislation on Children First, the Criminal Justice
(Withholding Information on Crimes Against Children and Vulnerable Adults)
Bill and the National Vetting Bureau Bill mark tremendous progress in the
direction of Ireland’s commitment to improving child protection. Of all the
changes on the horizon, the Constitutional amendment on children’s rights
provides the greatest opportunity for lasting change that will alter the course
for children in Ireland for generations to come. We owe it to the generations
we failed in the past; our citizens who are children now and the children of
tomorrow to stay the course, maintain our commitment and make history by
making these changes a reality.

Thank you for your attention.

Norah Gibbons
Director of Advocacy
Barnardos
30.3.2012

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