Children's charities have called for the immediate establishment of a 24-hour national social work service following the publication of the inquiry into the tragic deaths of the Dunne family in Monageer, Co Wexford, two years ago.
The children's charity Barnardos called for more communication between services responding to families in crisis following the publication today of the Monageer report.
In its edited report published this afternoon, the inquiry team said it believes a number of family, financial and personality-related factors, rather than single cause, contributed to the decision by Adrian (29) and Ciara Dunne (24) to end their lives and those of their children, five-year-old Leanne and three-year-old Shania.
Mr Dunne died by hanging on the weekend of April 20th-23rd 2007, wife Ciara died by ligature strangulation, and Leanne and Shania died by smothering. The report says it was clear that the pair were planning the deaths of the family.
In a statement today, Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay extended his sympathies to both families affected by the tragedy. He went on to call for an adequate crisis response system from all medical, psychiatric and social welfare services outside normal office hours.
“The publication of this inquiry report yet again highlights the importance of an adequate support system under which every effort is made to support children and families in crisis in a planned and co-ordinated manner. Every inquiry which has dealt with the tragic issue of non-accidental child death and neglect has come to the same conclusion; that more communication between all services involved is urgently needed so that vulnerable children do not fall through the gaps," Mr Finlay said.
"With this in mind we welcome today’s announcement by Minister for Children Barry Andrews that a new post of a National Director for Service Integration will be established. We call on the HSE to ensure every effort is made to ensure that this new measure will lead to a more integrated health and social care system on the ground.”
However, Mr Finlay said Barnardos was "entirely baffled" as to why seven out of 26 recommendations in the report needed to be censored.
"While understanding that the Government has to take care with regards to identifying individuals, it is surely unacceptable to censor recommendations of the inquiry team. The real value of an inquiry of this kind is to learn the lessons needed from the mistakes of the past so as to improve the systems in place.”
ISPCC advocacy manager Mary Nicholson said that while the report had some positive recommendations, there was "a degree of frustration that this is yet another report reiterating how our child protection and welfare systems have failed the children it seeks to serve and protect".
"This is not the first time recommendations of this kind have been made and this report brings to the forefront the ever present gaps in our child protection system which have yet to be addressed."
The ISPCC called on the Government to implement its '24-hour child' campaign, which seeks "the immediate introduction of comprehensive, twenty-four hour, seven day a week, out-of-hours child protection and family support services.
"Current out-of-hours services are skeletal at best and non-existent at worst. Given that most family crises occur at evenings and weekends, it is inevitable that many families are not receiving the supports they so badly need," Ms Nicholson said.
The Children's Rights Alliance also called for the immediate implementation of the report's recommendations, in particular ‘the provision of a national out of hours social work service "structured and resourced to ensure an appropriate response to all serious child protection and welfare concerns".
Chief executive Jillian van Turnhout said she hoped "lessons will be learnt" from the tragedy.
"What we learnt today is that the absence of an out of hours social work service was identified by the inquiry team as ‘a fundamental problem’. It is telling that their first recommendation was the need for such a service," she said.
"We have also learnt today that we need to strengthen our social work, health and Gardaí services for children and families, and that these services need to be co-ordinated so that problems can be identified. It is this identification and response that will ultimately lessen the risk of preventable child deaths. Disjointed services must be a thing of the past, if we hope to stop these tragedies from happening again."
Ms van Turnhout said it was "extremely disappointing" that almost a quarter of the inquiry’s recommendations have not been made public.