CHILDCARE POLICY makers need to hear the voices of people like Louise Rafter. Now 21 years old, she was placed in the care of the State before her first birthday. The child protection system was supposed to safeguard her welfare. Instead, her experience was of a chaotic and profoundly damaging system.
Abused in a foster home at the age of nine, she says life quickly became a blur of care placements, drug-taking, self-harm and “going crazy”. Despite the best intentions of some individual social workers, she felt utterly failed by health authorities. Today, she considers herself lucky to have survived.
Her story, documented by Carl O’Brien in last Saturday’s edition of this newspaper, is not an isolated one. She sees herself as a spokesperson for other young people failed by the care system and has first-hand experience of the effects of poorly resourced and badly managed social services. Tragically, we are not able to hear the voices of many of these children. Too many vulnerable young lives have been lost because the care system was not able to provide a more structured and supportive environment. These include Tracey Fay, who died at the age of 18, David Foley, aged 17, Kim O’Donovan aged 15, and 19-year-old Danny Talbot.
Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews has announced a review group to examine the circumstances surrounding these deaths and others in State care over the past decade. The findings are unlikely to surprise. Almost certainly they will point to the same kinds of failures: chaotic communication, poor care planning and over-worked frontline staff too focused on crisis management. These are not new complaints. Social workers and children’s rights campaigners have been voicing them for years. But there is little sign that public policy-makers have taken them seriously. For instance, hundreds of children in care do not have an allocated social worker; as many as one-third have no continuing care plan.
The Government and the Health Service Executive have pledged in recent weeks to ensure child protection services are adequately funded and better organised. But it must listen to young people like Louise Rafter. She says more energy needs to be focused on supporting families and parents in difficult situations to raise their children. And if a child does need to be admitted into care, authorities must do everything possible to ensure it is a stable, loving placement that meets the young person’s needs. Nothing less is acceptable.