Child abuse victims must wait 18 months for support, group says

Some victims of child abuse in the State are waiting up to 18 months to access appropriate supports, a gap that is “quite shocking”, campaigners for children’s rights have said.

The issue is among the many highlighted in a report prepared by the Children's Rights Alliance for submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

It is being submitted in parallel with the Government’s response to the committee on how the State is protecting the rights of children in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Government officials will be examined by the committee in Geneva in January 2016 – the State’s third such appearance in 20 years.

Speaking in Dublin to mark the publication of the report, entitled Are We There Yet?, Children's Rights Alliance chief executive Tanya Ward said it was the culmination of a year's work and consultation with 100 member bodies.

She said that, even since the report had gone to print, some of the issues had been addressed or partially addressed.

"While many children are happy and safe, our report shows the gritty reality that too many others are experiencing serious breaches of their rights and points to areas where Ireland could be doing much better."

She said that the soaring child poverty rate was linked to homelessness.

“No child should ever experience homelessness, yet there are over 1,500 children living in emergency accommodation for long periods.

“Nearly the same number of children is living in the direct provision system, many of whom face similarly serious challenges to their welfare and development.”

Access to refuges

Ms Ward said that, in one year alone, women and children experiencing domestic violence were denied access to refuges on 3,500 occasions.

The report says that the State was moving in the right direction with extending free GP care to all children under the age of 12, but more needed to be done about mental health.

It says that there were more than 3,000 children on waiting lists for mental health services, against a backdrop of a high youth suicide rate.

The report states that, in May alone, more than a quarter of open child protection cases had not been allocated a social worker. That backlog included 1,731 cases deemed high priority.

The problems faced by many Traveller children are also highlighted in the submission, which was completed before the recent tragic fire at a halting site in Carrickmines.

Speaking on the report, The Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole said that he believed such an exercise was sometimes seen as being "in some way negative".

Mr O’Toole said: “This is not in the slightest a negative report. It’s a report which is based on the enthusiasm which our society has for the standards that are embodied in the UN convention.

“We know that, in spite of everything we’ve been through as a society, in terms of, quite rightly, beating ourselves up over the abysmal failures of child protection that have been so much a part of our society for so long, that we still have not reached a point whereby we can guarantee basic safety to all our children.”