A 14-year-old boy in Tusla care is up all night on his mobile phone until 6am and then sleeping until 4pm or 5pm each day in an unregulated special care arrangement, a court heard.
At the Family Law Court, the boy’s court appointed-independent voice, the Guardian ad Litem (GAL), said that when he went to see the boy in recent days, the teenager refused to come out of his bedroom to see him and told him to “F-off”.
The court previously heard that staff at the care unit were frightened after the teenager told them “he had made a sawn-off shotgun, albeit it was in no way real”.
Judge Adrian Harris said he was pleading with management at Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, to provide a proper placement for the boy.
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He said: “This child is in care and he is going missing every second day and with the grace of God has come back each time and I am concerned that, God forbid, we will find ourselves in a different situation.”
Last month, Tusla secured an emergency care order after the teen “completely destroyed” his home in a row sparked over his mother refusing to return his mobile phone to him.
Initially, the teenager was a social admission by Tusla to a university hospital after the fuel protests prevented gardaí from transferring him to a hotel placement in Dublin.
The boy was going from hotel placement to hotel placement on a daily basis before Tusla secured the special care place earlier this month.
On his recent visit to the accommodation, the boy’s GAL told the court that staff at the unit said the teenager “is up all night on his phone until 6am and falls asleep at 6am or 7am and doesn’t want to get up to someone like me knocking at the door at midday because it is the middle of the night for him”.
The GAL agreed that the boy has “unrestricted, unstructured access to his phone 24 hours a day”. He has had no education for the last year.
Asked by solicitor Michael MacSweeney for the child’s parents about restricting access to the phone, the GAL agreed that in an ideal world it should be limited.
He said that, as he has seen in residential units and special care arrangements, “there is less ability to do that – to go into his room and take the phone off him and what that might create there in terms of a scenario that might play out”.
The GAL asked: “Is it right to bring a child into care if you can’t provide them with a suitable placement? It is a very fundamental question that is there to be answered by Tusla at this point given that we are six or seven weeks into this.”
He said: “If they can’t provide him with a placement should they be bringing him into care? Of course the opposite is what happens if they don’t – that isn’t a good option. It really feels that they are ‘snookered’ to use a phrase.”
The judge said the child’s parents “are helpless in this situation and they tried their best and can’t provide the care he needs either”.
Harris extended the Interim Care Order to June 26th and asked that a Tusla local manager and a manager at the Tusla national placement team attend court to provide an update on the situation.
