At any time in the past 20 years a visitor to any meeting of childcare workers would have heard some of the concerns which led to the failings outlined in the report on Newtown House in Co Wicklow.
Trained staff were difficult to find and nobody in authority seemed interested in providing training for the unqualified people already working in the system.
Support services for the children were as hard to get as untrained staff. In Newtown House it could take six months to obtain an appointment with a therapeutic specialist.
Overhanging the concerns was the realisation that residential childcare was deeply unfashionable.
This was partly due to the bad image which the old institutions, such as Letterfrack and Artane, had earned for themselves by the end of the 1960s, an image which blazed up again in the 1990s when the former residents finally got to tell their stories.
It was also due to the growing popularity of foster care for children who could not live with their parents.
Foster care was, and is, a more congenial setting for children than institutional living, in most cases. It is also cheaper than residential care even after the dramatic increase to £200 a week in the fostering allowance, introduced by the Minister of State with responsibility for children, Ms Mary Hanafin, and due to come into effect this summer.
People working in residential care had the suspicion - and it was well founded - that they were being consigned to the scrapheap of history.
But foster care placements break down and some children never have their specialised psychological needs met despite the sometimes frantic efforts of caring parents.
Residential care is with us to stay, but in circumstances in which it is emerging from a long period of neglect.
That neglect led to a situation in which untrained workers at Newtown House were expected to provide a therapeutic setting for some of the most disturbed children in the State.
They were expected to do this with minimal support in terms of psychological or other health board services. It was, quite simply, an absurd and dangerous situation, and it could never have worked.
The Irish Social Services Inspectorate is currently working its way through the residential childcare facilities run by health boards. Health boards are inspecting children's homes run by bodies such as charities, trusts and religious orders.
Their reports are public documents. The inspectorate has taken the laudable step of publishing its reports on its website at http://www.issi.ie and, hopefully, health boards will begin to do the same.
If we want to avoid a repetition of Newtown House, the residential childcare sector will have to be given due recognition for the important and exceptionally difficult work it does. And, more importantly, it will have to be given the staff and the back-up services with which to do it.
pomorain@irish-times.ie