The state’s childcare system is in crisis and some of Ireland’s most vulnerable children are ‘falling through the cracks’, the latest report by The Child’s Right Project (CLP) warned.

The lack of appropriate placements is having “a domino effect that risks collapsing the care system”, “a crisis is unfolding” and a “whole of government” response is urgently needed, the report concludes, looking at three-year case trends.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KCspecial rapporteur for child protection, said: “This report raises the alarm: some of Ireland’s most vulnerable children are falling through the cracks. The key question now is how the state will respond.”

Ms Gallagher and District Court President Judge Paul Kelly will be among the speakers at an event on Monday to launch the report.

Entitled ‘Falling Through the Cracks: An Analysis of Child Care Proceedings from 2021 to 2024’, the report comes as the Garda investigation into the missing, presumed dead, eight-year-old child. Kyran Durnincontinue. The boy was not in the care of the state, but TuslaThe Agency for Children and Families has previously engaged with his family and provided the government with its assessments of this interaction.

Dr Maria Corbett, chief executive of the CLP, said she had seen cases of children flourishing in care, but had also seen “a growing number of cases” where judges and other professionals were concerned that that children were “falling through the cracks”.

“Serious gaps” in the state’s response to children include an “acute shortage” of foster care placements; an “unfortunate response” by the HSE to meeting the disability, mental health and addiction needs of children in care; and “weak” inter-agency cooperation.

Dr Corbett welcomed the Department for Children’s establishment of an inter-agency committee on vulnerable children and progress towards reforming the family justice system and child care law.

( O’Gorman says he will “act immediately” on the findings of the Tusla review into the Kyran Durnin caseOpens in a new window )

However, there is still “no whole-of-government child protection strategy” and “no roadmap” to deliver the legal and policy changes needed to create a new model of high-support care placement for children with complex needs and those at risk of exploitation. or traffic.

The report reveals that almost a third of parents (29 per cent) in childcare cases had a disability, two-thirds of whom had mental health problems and the majority of the rest had a cognitive disability.

CLP Chief Executive Dr Carol Coulter said adequate support for vulnerable parents, particularly those with disabilities, could help keep children in their families and meet Ireland’s international human rights obligations.

A CLP survey of 38 district courts found that in more than 70 percent of those courts, child care cases are heard alongside other cases in often crowded dockets, despite the legal requirement that they be heard separately.

The report includes several anonymized case studies of children’s encounters with the legal system, including the two below.

Case Study One

This is about a boy with very serious behavioral problems, including an addiction to aerosols since the age of 10, an eating disorder and violent attacks on care staff. He entered the care system aged 14 and spent time in special care, detention and residential care. A psychologist, concerned about his extreme emotional and behavioral problems, found that both parents were unable to leave him because of the father’s health problems and domestic violence and the mother’s traumatic background, alcohol and heroin abuse and mental health problems.

When his case was reviewed, the Court heard that the boy had not yet had a Camhs assessment and was placed in a holiday home as no suitable placement was available.

Case study two

This case study looked at full care orders for four young children from a family known to the Children and Families Agency for some time. All four experienced significant adverse childhood events, their mother received extensive support, and a child safety plan was put in place.

The agency’s concerns included a “dramatic” decline in the family’s circumstances after the mother became involved with a man with a serious criminal conviction. In one incident, when the mother and children were in a car with a friend of the mother’s, her boyfriend followed them and crashed into their car. In another, after he was arrested following a serious domestic violence incident, there were serious attacks on the mother’s home, including the bombing of her car. The care orders were granted based on evidence from social workers, a garda and a clinical psychologist.