Serious concern has been voiced about the safety of troubled children in a a State-run care home. .jpg)
Inspectors for the State’s health watchdog, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) said that the care unit, Crannóg Nua locked children in for up to 12 hours a day, the Irish Times reports.
In a highly critical report, published today, is highly critical, and found outcomes for the some of the children were poor due to their needs not being met and inadequate management of risk-taking behaviour.
High support units such as Crannóg Nua are open residential services for children in care who require specialised support. They are not supposed to be used to detain young people.
Inspectors said the practice of locking children into the facility from 8pm until 8am contravened national care policies and did not appear to have any legal basis.
The authority said it fully acknowledged the challenge in keeping some children safe, but the practice was in breach of children’s rights and official policy.
“The routine locking of doors impinges on children’s rights and detains children in a way that is not within the legal remit of the high support unit,” the report states.
“Children may only be detained by a High Court order or a sentence relating to children’s offending behaviour.”
However, the head of the new Child and Family Support Agency Gordon Jeyes has rejected the criticism — insisting that locking doors at night was what any normal and reasonable parent would do for children in their care.
But the teenage boys and girls — who have complex emotional problems — are at risk of being trapped, as the unit’s doors are not automatically released in the event of a fire.
Mr Jeyes said the four children being cared for in the unit at the time would have been able to escape in the event of fire because three staff — who remain awake all night — were on duty with keys.
“The vast majority of us lock our doors at night. It’s also the case that if any of our children were evincing vulnerable behaviour and at risk from alcohol or drugs we would pull their boundaries in.”
However the inspectors also noted that tocking the doors had failed to stop the young people from absconding without permission at other times of the day. There were 134 reported unauthorised absences in the past 12 months.
Today’s report shows there were a total of 49 staff employed at Crannóg Nua at the time of the inspection, who were providing care to just four children ranging in age from 13 to 17 years.
In spite of the high level of staffing, inspectors found that staff called the Garda on a number of occasions to provide assistance.
“Children’s behaviour had deteriorated to a point at which staff did not feel safe to physically intervene due to the level of threatening behavior,” the report states.
“Whilst inspectors found that it was appropriate to call An Garda Síochána in these circumstances they were concerned that the service was unable to meet children’s needs in these circumstances.”
The report states that some of children being placed in Crannóg Nua had “high risk behaviour” which required special care, a more intensive form of care which involves detention and must be authorised by the High Court.
A lack of special care beds, however, meant some children were being placed in what was supposed to be an open residential setting, even though it did not meet their needs.
Inspectors did find that there continued to be a good standard of care provided to children in many areas and a committed management team, coupled with a motivated staff team, ensured the delivery of a child-centred service but they noted that “not all staff were appropriately qualified”.
Appropriate training was not provided to staff and managers to ensure the development of quality risk assessments which would, for instance, allow them to analyse the root causes of children absconding, it said.
One child told inspectors that the sanctions imposed for absconding were minimal and did not change their behaviour.