Welcome Address by Ms Frances Fitzgerald T.D., Minister for Children and Youth Affairs at the launch of National Standards for the Welfare and Protection of Children
Wednesday 25th July 2012
I am delighted to be here today at the launch of the National Standards for the Welfare and Protection of Children.
I would like to particularly welcome An Taoiseach Enda Kenny T.D. for not only agreeing to attend today to launch these Standards, but also for his huge and personal commitment, as head of Government, to delivering radical reform in child protection in Ireland.
The critical aspect of these Standards is that they will be tested. Checked. Assessed and Audited.
From now on, HIQA will constantly and consistently monitor and interrogate the services being provided to our nation’s children.
That is a radical step forward. And it’s a radical shift in how we do business.
Up to now, any investigation of the Child Welfare and protection system has been an attempt to establish the cause of failure. The most tragic recent example was the review undertaken by Norah Gibbons and Dr. Geoffrey Shannon to establish how the system failed the children who were known to the HSE or who died in its care.
We are absolutely clear on the results of systemic failure. We see families torn apart, childhoods ended, adulthoods destroyed before they begin.
We have had 17 major statutory reports on child protection failings since 1980 in this country, the most recent being the Report of the Independent Child Death Review.
These reports have highlighted consistent and common failings:
- Failings by society.
- Failings by the state
- Failings by services.
Services which did not work together, which were not fit for purpose; which were blunted by:
- A lack of quality;
- A lack of effectiveness;
- A lack of accountability.
Responding to this legacy has been the driving force of my Department and I since the Taoiseach decided last year that there should be one dedicated Department and senior minister for Children and Youth Affairs.
Our reform programme, carried out on behalf of the Government; is comprehensive and it is ambitious.
In child protection our change agenda involves:
- legislative reform;
- service reform and
- constitutional reform
We are acting, and we are acting as fast as we can, to cure the problems we inherited;
- we are creating a Child and Family Support Agency,
- we have appointed Gordon Jeyes as CEO Designate of this new Agency which will be established in 2013,
- we are enshrining Children First in law and this autumn,
- we are drafting new legislation for the adoption of children &
- we are going to offer the people the chance to change our constitution to give further supports to children and families.
But we also have to make a number of cultural shifts.
I speak of a culture because it must permeate the system.
It must be embedded in practice.
We need to move to a situation where we no longer assume ‘child protection’ must be synonymous with crises and problems.
It should not be.
In time it will not be.
It will be synonymous with excellence.
This will not happen over night, but we have started in that important journey.
And I recognise its urgency.
And we will get there by applying the same Standards of delivery to child protection as we would expect in any excellent public or private service.
Most of that is driven by excellent managers and staff. But it must be supported by review and assessment. Just as the Comptroller and Auditor General assesses financial governance, so HIQA will assess delivery. And I would expect both agencies to take similar approaches and ultimately find similar issues.
As time goes on, HIQA assessments should mainly find success and professionalism.
What the C & AG regularly finds is unidentified risks, or the existence of the seeds of financial issues, spotted before they germinate into problems. HIQA will do the same.
In 2013 we will have moved from a position where child and family welfare was barely a priority, to a position where it will be the sole focus of a single dedicated State agency, overseen by a single dedicated government Department.
The new Agency will have real accountability; every senior executive must have child and family services as their exclusive job.
This agency will dissolve the silos between services.
We must ensure that one branch of the state system, while trying to get support for a child or family, is not hampered or ignored by another branch of the same state.
This agency must create efficiency and excellence out of systemic chaos.
For decades the child protection system has chased symptoms. We have seen children with problems, or in care, or jail, or in the worst cases children have, tragically, died. And we have said ‘what caused this?’ and have tried to trace the source of the problem.
Now we are moving to a system where we will interrogate the system in the absence of evident failure. Where in essence we move from symptom to screening.
I have little doubt that in the early months and years that process will reveal failings. Possibly awful failings. We know there are many service issues which have been neglected. We are effectively building a new architecture for child protection. It will take time for us to create that new reality out of the rubble of a system that has been crumbling for decades. But the publication of these Standards is a major step on the road.
I have said that this process will reveal failings, which is good, because we cannot fix what we cannot see.
But we will fix those problems, just as we are fixing the ones we already know of. And eventually we will end up identifying and assessing risks in the system, long before those risks are allowed to create problems in the lives of children.
I would like to acknowledge the work of HIQA, the HSE, officials in my own Department and the members of the Standards Advisory Group, many of whom are with us here today. Your expertise, experience and valuable contributions were of huge benefit in developing these Standards.
The National Standards will apply to the HSE Children and Family Services and the performance by the HSE of its duties under Section 3 of the Child Care Act, 1991, in particular the work of social workers engaged in chid protection activities.
I’d like to take this opportunity to again place on record my unequivocal support and appreciation for the work carried out in this area.
The principles of keeping children safe have not changed in the last decade, but what we have learned is the need for proper implementation, for independent inspection, for vigilance and for legislative compliance. It is no longer sufficient to say what needs to be done. We must ensure that all of society, particularly those in trusted positions with children, are fully aware of their responsibilities to children, and are supported in their work and act in accordance with the best interests of children at heart.
The State has a duty to do all it can to ensure that the abuse and neglect that children suffered in the past does not happen in the future and where it does, it is responded to appropriately. I would go further to say that the safety and welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility - we all have a duty.
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More about the National Standards for the Protection and Welfare of Children
