High Court finds Tusla in contempt of court

[mathepac]

Court report by RTE's Órla O'Donnell

"The High Court has found the Child and Family Agency Tusla is in contempt of court for failing to provide secure placements for vulnerable children despite being directed to do so.

Legal sources say it is believed to be the first time a State agency has been held to be in contempt of court.

The action was taken on behalf of three children in respect of whom special care orders were made by the High Court."

"The court did not order any further measures to be taken as a result of the declaration of contempt", presumably because, "these children had now received placements" but despite that, "it was a systemic and recurring problem and there were still five to seven children every week for whom no special care beds were available despite orders being made."

If this was a private enterprise found in contempt, the organisation could be fined, and if the fine remains unpaid, then someone, CEO, owner, company secretary, could possibly be jailed until the contempt is discharged and the fine paid. The same would apply to a private individual, unless I'm badly mistaken.

It makes no sense to me to fine a body reliant on State funding, but is there a case for fining or indeed jailing someone, somewhere in the chain of command for the ongoing and repeated failures of Tusla to do its job and to comply with High Court Order, otherwise what's the point in contempt order(s)?

"The judge said the human tragedy at the centre of these proceedings was not new and had been playing out in the courts for more than seven years."

"She [Judge Emily Egan] found that if the legislation was too onerous, the remedy was not "systematic non-compliance" but to amend or repeal the law. And she said there would be significant concerns about the rule of law if public bodies could be exempt from their statutory duties by claiming it was impossible to fulfil them.

If the courts accepted resource-based non-compliance, she said this would effectively allow the Government to "nullify legislation by inaction".

So what's the answer then? Should we scrap an organisation that hasn't been doing its job and which doesn't look like it ever can, and hire in an external agency with a track record of doing this vital job of safeguarding vulnerable children? Would you or I be kept in a job where our annual report was graded Fails To Meet Requirements for seven years in succession?

 

[Purple]

We legislate for services that we are unable to deliver. The same goes for kids with additional needs and care for the vulnerable and the elderly. We simply don't have the people to do what we want to do.
There is a shortage of social workers working in this area. If we increase the number of social workers then we need to increase the resources of the Courts to deal with all of the additional child protection issues. Then we need to allocate more Garda resources. Then we need to have more addition services for both children and adults. Ditto for mental health services. We also have to increase the number of foster families (the hardest issue to solve). We can't force people to foster kids and for very good reasons there aren't that many people who want to do it.

Earlier intervention would help; by the time Tusla gets involved the damage is done and it's a far bigger problem to solve. The question is how do we do that without far greater resources?

 

[Purple]

One further comment on this. Mandatory reporting requirements for Teachers, Psychologists, Solicitors, and Doctors etc means that TUSLA has a massive number of ass-covering cases to deal with contributes to delays and increases backlogs.

 

[mathepac]

TUSLA in the news again

"An inspection of a Tusla-run Special Care Unit found that further action was required to ensure ongoing safe and effective care of the young people living at the facility.

Special Care Units (SCUs) are secure facilities for vulnerable young people typically aged between 11 and 17.

An unannounced risk-based inspection by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) took place in May following what it has described as "a lack of assurances" given by Tusla regarding adequate staffing levels at the unit.

Tusla had confirmed in April that staffing was "not fully aligned" to the ratios set out for the special care unit.

It outlined a number of measures it had implemented to ensure ongoing safe and effective care of young people as a result."

"Two weeks prior to inspection, a decision was made to introduce a sixth young person to the unit, following a review of risks in the service.

This resulted in an increased requirement for social care managers and deputy social care managers to work shifts assigned to the young people according to HIQA.

All staff who spoke with inspectors expressed concern about the introduction of another resident, as this would likely increase incidents of risk.

They indicated that "the good will and availability of staff had been exhausted".

Who is making the decisions to increase the ratios of residents to care staff and why the need for the levels of management?

 

[Leper]

I'm not one bit surprised that TUSLA was found in contempt of court.

 

[Purple]

The care requirements for each child depend greatly on the care plan that has been put in place for that child so it may be the case that a staff to child ratio of 1:1 is suitable or it may be the case that a staff to child ratio of 2:1 is required.

In the case of Special Care Units, the subject of the Court finding of contempt, the minimum staff to child ratio in any given 24 hour period is 7:1.

The Staff absentee rate in the unit is very high at 35%. That means that almost 50% more staff are being paid to cover the minimum staff to child ratio. That means that there are around 60 staff employed to look after 6 children. That's around €60,000 a week in wages, €20,000 of which is sick pay.

Given the above it seems reasonable to question the culture and work ethic of the employees (and that may well be caused by bad management) and whether this is giving the State the outcome that it desires in relation to the care of these vulnerable children.

There is and will remain a shortage of suitably qualified people (QQI level 5 minimum) who want to work in this area. Of those who do a large proportion want to work part time. That's not going to change, therefore we need to question if we should be balancing the desire to provide best in class services with the reality of what will always be a shortage of staff to provide that service. It's easy for a Judge to issue an edict from a Courtroom. It's a much harder thing to fix the underlying structural issues in the sector.

 

[mathepac]

The care requirements for each child depend greatly on the care plan that has been put in place for that child

Why would anyone within an organisation be allowed to write and publish a care plan that can never be delivered? Its mindless nonsense, box-ticking to the extreme.

scrap an organisation that hasn't been doing its job and which doesn't look like it ever can, and hire in an external agency with a track record of doing this vital job of safeguarding vulnerable children?

Why not do this instead and safeguard the vulnerable children with the best in class, organisationally, with the skill-sets and experience that experts in the area can find? Surely to do less is to say the children concerned aren't worth the effort, that they don't matter.

It's a much harder thing to fix the underlying structural issues in the sector.

I think you might mean "organisational"issues, at least I hope you do. Handy defines 64 attributes of organisations, "structure", being merely one, and its about what box appears where on an organisation chart. It is the least important attribute but yet again, for some reason, the one that gets most or perhaps, any, attention. "How are you doing with that organisation design job?" "Well we've drawn all the boxes, written job-titles in them, defined a hierarchy and structure, listed pay-scales, given it a name so I'd say we're finished."

 

[Purple]

Why not do this instead and safeguard the vulnerable children with the best in class, organisationally, with the skill-sets and experience that experts in the area can find? Surely to do less is to say the children concerned aren't worth the effort, that they don't matter.

Because we don’t have the people to staff a best in class service which has the capacity to offer that service to all the children who need it.
If resources are available then they are probably better directed to early intervention so that less of the more expensive and labour intensive services are required later. In reality it is usually very late in the day when TUSLA actually get involved with a child unless older siblings are already in case.

 

[mathepac]

Because we don’t have the people to staff a best in class service which has the capacity to offer that service to all the children who need

I know and I've already suggested shutting the whole sad, sorry, and potentially harmful lot down and buying in expertise from elsewhere in order to safeguard the children.

 

[Purple]

I know and I've already suggested shutting the whole sad, sorry, and potentially harmful lot down and buying in expertise from elsewhere in order to safeguard the children.

If we could buy it then that would be great but I suspect it's not available.