The likelihood of the courts agreeing to place children into care varies significantly from area to area, with many District Courts consenting to all applications while judges in bigger cities refuse one in five.
Also, the HSE is much more likely in some places than others to go to the courts seeking care orders.
In some towns of similar size, there was a 90 per cent variation in the rate of care order applications by the HSE last year.
For example, in Letterkenny, Clonmel and Mallow, there were, respectively, 217, 276 and 267 recorded applications for care orders for varying periods before the courts. But in Tullamore, Longford and Monaghan, the numbers were as low as 13, 29 and 30 applications respectively.
In many parts of the country the courts granted every care order applied for. But in Dublin and Cork, where half of the Republic’s cases arise, rates were at 80 per cent.
Those locations where all of the orders applied for were granted by the District Courts included Tralee-Listowel, Trim, Limerick and Mallow.
Child
care research project The
trends are revealed in the latest batch of case research published by the Child Care Law Reporting Project, which examines and reports on child care proceedings in the courts.
Project director Dr Carol Coulter said the individual cases studied revealed a significant number of children in the care system who had mental health issues.
“The cases also show that the courts are capable of producing creative solutions to the problems of children requiring protection,” she said.
Dr Coulter was also struck by the continuing incidence of a “small minority of cases” in which children were severely abused.
As well as the data on current trends, the project also released 24 redacted reports on recent cases before the courts. These included:
A judge successfully suggesting a woman be given funding to extend her home in order that she could take in two small children related to her
.
The
Child and Family Agency
being granted an application to place a psychotic minor in psychiatric care. The teenager was willing to go to hospital, but because he was living in care, the hospital would not admit him under his own consent and so an application under the Mental Health Act was required. He was placed into an adult unit, as no adolescent places were available.
In a District Court in a rural town, care orders were granted in respect of five siblings, all under the age of six years, after allegations that the two oldest siblings had been sexually and physically abused. The court was told that the next two children had probably been abused and that the fifth sibling had been taken from its parents shortly after birth because of the situation at home. The judge said the “horrors’” of the children’s lives were “unimaginable”.
The project has urged some caution when interpreting the figures for the rate at which care orders were applied for, and granted or refused, saying there are variations in how cases are recorded from place to place.
The Irish Courts Service plans to introduce a recording template for all District Courts.
Overall, while the number of care order applications increased in 2011 and again in 2012, at a rate of 15 per cent, numbers fell last year, by 6 per cent to 8,714 cases.
