Some judges are too quick to make orders putting children into the care of the Child and Family Agency, the co-author of a new study of child care proceedings in Ireland has said.
Speaking at an international conference on child protection and the law, Dr Conor O'Mahony, of University College Cork, said in a recent qualitative study of three counties, the success rate for child care applications by the agency varied from 66 per cent to 99 per cent.
The interdisciplinary study, a Qualitative Analysis of the Irish District Court, undertaken by Dr O’Mahony and colleagues at UCC, involved interviews with judges, social workers, solicitors, barristers and court-appointed guardians in three counties, making up 50 per cent of all applications over three years.
It examined seven topics including parental representation and participation in District Court child protection proceedings, which involve the agency seeking care orders for children.
“Some judges are much quicker to make orders than others and some are potentially a bit too quick,” Dr O’Mahony said.
He said in one county, one judge never refused an application by the agency, while another judge refused half the applications.
He quoted one judge as telling the study “an unsuccessful applicant is almost unknown … the fact that the [CFA IS]involved indicates that there is a problem and something needs to be done about the problem”.
The judge also said he had made orders that “tended to favour the parents” and frequently found he was wrong and the children were “damaged”.
Dr O’Mahony said the theory was that parents have a very strong hand in court, but in practice, it looked different.
He highlighted concerns about legal representation for parents and said orders are made in some venues without it.
He also said legal aid solicitors just “don’t have the time they need” to prepare their cases properly. And he said the Legal Aid Board fee structure for experts, at €385 per report, meant “they just can’t get people to do it”, while the agency arrives in court with a team of experts.
Dr O’Mahony said there needs to be more legal aid solicitors to deal with caseloads and more resources to access experts.
Child Care Law Reporting Project director, Dr Carol Coulter, told the conference it was essential parents in child protection proceedings have access to qualified and experienced experts.
She also highlighted differences in the volumes of applications in various towns of roughly similar size and “big differences in the types of orders sought by the agency in different parts of the country”.
She said 25 per cent of applications in Waterford were for supervision orders, when children stay in their own homes and are visited by social workers, while the figure was only 4 per cent in Dublin.
Dr Coulter also said multiple adjournments and delays in proceedings must be eliminated as soon as possible.
The conference, hosted in Dublin by the project and the Law Society of Ireland, was opened by Minister for Children James Reilly and chaired by Dr Geoffrey Shannon, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection and Tanya Ward, director of the Children’s Rights Alliance.
Speakers included retired Supreme Court judge, Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness, Janice McGhee, Edinburgh University, Sophie Kershaw, family drug and alcohol court in England and Professor Tarja Poso, University of Tempere, Finland.
