A giant leap for children's services

Strategies launched with a fanfare often turn out to be high on aspirations and low on specifics. The National Children's Strategy launched yesterday morning is an exception to this rule.

True, it was launched with lots of hoopla and a children's band from Carrickmacross, but it could just be the most important policy document on children's services in decades.

What can really make this strategy work are two agencies: the National Children's Office and the Office of Ombudsman for Children.

There will also be a Dail na nOg but while the idea is catchy and has a feel-good tone to it, this particular assembly, made up of children and meeting regularly under the auspices of the Minister, is unlikely to change anything. No doubt future student leaders and politicians will cut their teeth in Dail na nOg but that is likely to be the limit of its influence.

The most powerful innovation announced yesterday was the National Children's Office. Its job will be to solve problems, especially where the solution requires getting different Government departments to work together.

The problems are myriad. They range from a shortage of affordable creches to secure units, from child poverty to delays in getting health services, from education to the absence of play facilities.

To tackle these and many other problems, the National Children's Office will need to be high-powered, and it will be. Its board will be made up of assistant secretaries from the main Government departments. It will report through the Minister for Children, Mary Hanafin, to a Cabinet subcommittee chaired by the Taoiseach. It will be established as an independent body under the Public Service Management Act 1997. It will have "significant" funding and will buy in expertise as required. It will be allocated £2 million to get itself under way.

The director of the National Children's Office will be a sort of "Children's Tsar" with the opportunity to influence what happens across a range of Government departments.

Crucially, the office, under its director, will examine how the various functions relating to children are distributed among departments and will be able to recommend changes.

Any viewer of Yes Minister will appreciate just how important it will be for civil servants in the departments concerned to stay on the right side of the director.

This alone will give the director huge clout - but plenty of headaches too. It is at the National Children's Office that fingers will point if things go wrong and nothing is done to fix them. And unless the shortage of high-support units for children is solved in the next six months or so, the director can expect an early visit to Mr Justice Peter Kelly in the High Court.

But where will families fit into this picture and how will they influence what happens? This is where the Ombudsman for Children comes in.

The ombudsman will investigate complaints from children and will publish an annual report. The mere fact of an investigation taking place should, in itself, bring about a change in how public bodies deal with children's issues.

In particular, parents who feel they are getting nowhere in their dealings with departments and health boards will now have an agency to turn to whose job is to investigate their complaints and to get answers.

It is vital that the Ombudsman for Children has the same power as the general Ombudsman to demand the co-operation of public bodies with investigations. A vital component of this should be a right to make a report to the Oireachtas if that co-operation is not forthcoming.

Delay is the enemy of services for children. The office of Ombudsman for Children was first announced by the Minister for Children before last, Austin Currie, and while its establishment will finally appear in legislation around the end of this year, it has been too long coming.

AND HERE, of course, is one of the clouds hanging over the strategy announced yesterday. Its implementation will extend many years beyond the lifetime of this Government. Will the next government continue the strategy or will it want to go back to the drawing board?

Certainly, Austin Currie, as Fine Gael Minister for Children, opposed the idea of establishing a National Childcare Agency, which would be close enough to the National Children's Office promised yesterday. He took the view that an interdepartmental committee chaired by himself could deal with problems of co-ordination and co-operation between Government departments. A great many people working with children believed he was wrong.

Would a new Cabinet, possibly made up of Ministers representing different parties, show the same commitment to creating a powerful and well-funded National Children's Office?

It was the fear of this sort of upset in the process which yesterday led Barnardos to call on the Opposition to sign up to the strategy and to develop an all-party consensus on implementing it.

Without such a consensus, and with the future of the Government by no means certain if various presumed banana skins emerge from tribunals and elsewhere, there is a danger this giant step forward in services for children could falter.

pomorain@irish-times.ie