CHILD victims of sexual abuse or other traumas are particularly vulnerable when they come into contact with health and social workers, and need special care. Proper facilities for such care is lacking, resulting in the practice of putting such children in hospital beds, because there is nowhere else to send them.
For three years at its annual conferences, the Irish Association of Social Workers has condemned this practice of "social admissions", to little effect. This year the IASW delegates came armed with statistics to back up its case.
The figures are contained in a paper presented to the weekend conference Renvyle House Hotel in Connemara by the head medical social worker in Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin, Ms Bernie Price.
She said 135 such children had been admitted to the hospital in the last two years. Six children were there for over 100 days, while 20 children stayed over a month. Four "social admissions" now at the hospital have been there for more than a month, Ms Price said.
"The practice of admitting well children to acute hospital beds, as a placement, is completely inappropriate. It can't cater for the emotional needs of those already traumatised children," she said. "It is happening because there isn't enough foster families or emergency residential placements for children."
Apart from children who have suffered sexual abuse, there are children who have been abandoned at home or on the street, or whose parents are unable to cope because of alcohol or drug abuse. A small percentage have physical disabilities or non acute medical conditions.
"For a long time I've been hearing people say, `it's very occasional and it's not a significant problem', but I would say it is a very serious problem," she said. Social workers also suffered because of what she described as the "abuse" of vulnerable children by the system. "All of their energy gets diverted into what I call the bureaucracy of finding a placement.
"You are on the phone and on the fax every day, trying to establish is there a foster family, is there a residential care facility, highlighting it to your senior management, rather than caring and working directly with the child around the trauma and the uncertainty and the upset."