IPPN

Published: 30 March 2011

Suffer the Children
Children in deprived areas of Limerick are asking friends for food on Fridays because they know they won’t get fed over the weekend, a new book on social exclusion in the city claims.
A teacher who spoke to Dr. Niamh Hourigan, editor of Understanding Limerick, said that even in cases where children show obvious signs of being beaten, suspected cases of neglect are not being prioritized by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
“All I hear from the HSE is, ‘We don’t have the power to do anything,’ or ‘We don’t have the resources to do anything.’ What can they do? That’s what I’d like to know,” the teacher told Hourigan.
It takes so long for neglect cases to get to the relevant HSE committee that the children are beyond help.
A social commented, “You take a child involved in anti-social behavior who you think is at risk. Well, the only way to get action for that child is to submit a child protection notification. But only a very small proportion of all original referrals actually get approved by the Child Protection Notification Committee based on budgets, etc. It’s only at that stage that you can have a case conference and get some action, and the process of getting it approved takes for f***ing ever.”
Another senior social worker said, “By the time we get to the point of intervening in a seriously neglected or abused child’s life, it’s nearly always too late to make any real difference. It becomes a matter for the psychiatric services or the criminal justice system, or sometimes the undertakers.”
Hourigan says the blame does not lie with front-line workers in social services in Limerick or even local HSE management, but concludes that the Limerick Regeneration project will not work unless the “crisis” in child protection services is dealt with on a national level.

Full Story: www.irishcentral.com