“Dear Judge, I want to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the effort and work that you put in for us, all the refugees, that we don’t see, all in purpose of trying to make us happy.
“Thank you very much, honestly, me personally, I’m speechless, I can’t thank you enough, especially this time of my life. You can imagine, alone, different country and culture. For once again in my life, I can say I have people who are looking out for me, people who want to see me happy and succeed, other than my parents. I hope you realise the difference you make for people like us.
“May God reward you for that, thank you for everything.”
District Court Judge Miriam Walsh smiles after reading aloud the card from a child in foster care. “That,” she says, “makes it seem worthwhile.”
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Some children thrive in the State’s care system, but others are not so lucky.
Judge Walsh and two of her Dublin District Court colleagues, Judges John Campbell and Conor Fottrell, are very concerned that mounting problems require more than a “crisis management” approach by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency (CFA).
[ Judges say ‘corporate, faceless’ Tusla is failing childrenOpens in new window ]
Of 5,558 children in State care in September 2023, 5,003 (90 per cent) were in foster care, 397 (7 per cent) were in residential placements, and 158 (3 per cent) were in other placements.
The three judges came together at the childcare courts in Dublin’s Bridewell to outline concerns, echoed in reports of the Child Law Project, about a dearth of foster carers and social workers, the agency’s increasing use of private unregulated and unregistered special emergency arrangements (SEAs), and children without allocated social workers.
Asked about Tusla chief executive Kate Duggan’s recent statement that it does not “stand over” unregulated placements, Judge Campbell said the reality is that the agency continues to use them and the courts have to deal with that.
“We’re the soldiers in the trenches, what the generals are deciding far back makes no difference to what we have to do immediately. They are the agency responsible for child care, they don’t have a best endeavours defence. They can’t shrug their shoulders. If they can’t do this work any longer, they should announce that to the world.”
If satisfied that a child must be taken into care, and presented with no option but an unregulated SEA, the judges will make the interim care order returnable for a week, not the usual 28 days, to ensure pressure remains on the agency to find an appropriate place, he said. “If we give the full 28 days, they will almost metaphorically put the file back into the drawer and nothing will happen.”
Younger children taken into care ideally start off with foster families but there is a problem getting foster families, he said. Some very young children go into SEAs because there is no available foster family or their needs are such that a foster family cannot meet them.
Having read about the CFA spending millions on private SEAs, Judge Fottrell said he sought specific figures from Tusla about that, but has yet to get them.
He would like to see “maybe more of a focus on medium to long-term planning” in terms of building or identifying residential units. “The idea of making money from children being placed in the care of the State, and the State not being in a position to put the children into appropriate placements itself, is a concern.”
Judge Walsh said: “I think it is a much better idea to keep it within. You can control and monitor things better. At the end of the day, privatising things means that people are in it for making money. That is distasteful, it’s making money from the misery of children.”
“If the CFA was a commercial business, and there was demand for more foster places or more residential units, they would build them,” said Judge Campbell. The State appeared to take the view it is “easier for it to pay than to build”.
The judges are acutely conscious of the enormity of a decision to remove a child from their parents, noting that care applications range from day-old babies to teenagers.
“Whatever you decide for a child today, they could be just five years old, is going to have huge implications into their forties, fifties, sixties,” said Judge Walsh. “They are incredibly difficult decisions to make.”
The court is also dealing with “probably some of the most vulnerable parents in society”, said Judge Fottrell, who, as a solicitor, was involved in child care applications over 15 years. “Some may have substance addiction issues, mental health concerns, homelessness, and a small number have been in care themselves and then go back in with their own children.”
Some children, the judges stressed, are at real risk. Some are vulnerable and can outgrow foster families, maybe because of their behaviour, and are placed in an insecure residential unit with a curfew that it cannot impose, Judge Campbell said.
That creates a risk of some children being exposed to crime and sexual predators, he said. The court had been told of incidents of taxis bringing a girl from a residential unit “and she disappears and comes back later in the night with money, and is then anxious to see the GP the following day because of whatever happened to her”.
“There was a time when this was almost unheard of, but now it is becoming an issue, which is the tragedy of it all,” said Judge Walsh.
The judges warmly praised “dedicated, hardworking” social workers doing a “very difficult”, sometimes dangerous, job at the coalface of the system.
They distinguished between them and what Judge Campbell referred to as the “corporate CFA”, with an apparent “lack of understanding of what the realities are” but holding the purse strings.
An issue of urgent concern, which recently emerged following persistent inquiries of the CFA in court by Judge Fottrell, is the non-allocation of social workers to more than 230 children in two social work areas.
Having an allocated experienced social worker, rather than visits from different social workers on a panel, provides “critical” consistency for a child and this standard was put in place 20 years ago, he said.
“The social workers are the canaries in the mine,” said Judge Campbell. “Many teenagers tend to be not talkative, they need a social worker there because once the court makes a care order, the child’s [court-appointed] guardian falls away automatically.”
The CFA has to recruit social workers from universities in Ireland which only have so many places despite the demand, he said. “If there was more joined-up thinking, they would take on more students. Maybe more engagement instead of silo management would help.”
Some cases involve unaccompanied minors who, Judge Campbell said, arrive here mostly with smugglers. Most appeared aged around 16 or 17 but may have no documents and are mostly from African countries, though some are from European nations, including Sweden and Turkey, he said.
As a movable judge, Judge Walsh sits not just in Dublin but in courts around the country where standard CFA and family law matters are usually allocated one day a week.
Having worked a lot in Trim District Court in the past two years, she has seen an increase in the number and complexity of CFA cases there. “They are more complex because of placement issues, and because some people are not from Ireland, we have to get translators and there can be cultural issues.”
The volume and complexity of cases before the three courts in the Bridewell, which deal with upwards of 24 cases daily, has also increased. That reflects a bigger native population and new arrivals from other countries, some “with different outlooks on how children are reared and chastised”, Judge Campbell said.
A critical element of the care process is the preparation of aftercare plans for children for after they turn 18, when the court’s jurisdiction comes to an end, said Judge Fottrell. “The idea is that from 16/17 they are planning their aftercare, their education, where they want to live, any supports or services, up to age 21.” The child is involved in preparing the plan and signs off on it, along with their guardian and the court.
A child often wants to meet the judge before they age out and will say they have a plan, they want to go to education or stay with foster care, said Judge Campbell. “We will meet them as often as they want to. You know when you speak with a child you have a good sense they will make it.”
When childcare work was devolved from the High Court to the District Court, that in a sense took it out of the media, he said. “We’re tucked away quietly, but there are the same issues, except we have a growing native population, a big influx of non-nationals and a cost of living crisis. It’s almost a perfect storm.”
The housing crisis is part of that, he said. He had just learned a “very good” social worker is resigning her position and going to Australia. “Who could blame her, because she will have a similar salary, better conditions, a nicer lifestyle. But it’s a terrible loss.”
A day in the childcare courts can move from one extreme to another. Earlier in the morning, Judge Walsh was told of a tragic parental suicide but, in another case, she was happy to permit a couple to bring their foster child on holidays to Spain. “They want them to be part of the family, we get that a lot.”
Asked about Taoiseach Simon Harris’s ambition, outlined at last May’s inaugural child poverty and wellbeing summit in Dublin, to have Ireland “become the best country in Europe to be a child”, she said: “That is very aspirational.”
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