Parental substance abuse and disability most common reasons for State intervention.
Parental substance abuse and parental disability are the most common reasons the State takes children into care, a landmark report on childcare legal proceedings finds.
The final report from the Child Care Law Reporting (CCLR) Project also finds a quarter of the children taken into care have “special needs” of their own – physical, educational or psychological – with 19 per cent of the children having special psychological needs.
Children from ethnic minorities, including Travellers, are about seven times more likely to be subject to care proceedings than other white Irish children.
Dr Carol Coulter’s report, published this morning, covers the duration of the CCLR project, from December 2012 to July 2015, and captures 1,272 childcare cases.
Of these, 1,194 were before the 26 district courts and 78 before the High Court. They represent about 30 per cent of the childcare cases before the courts in the 30-month period.
A care order was rarely sought for just one reason, according to the report, and although the stated reason in court may be neglect or abuse of the child, when a parent’s problem, such a disability or addiction, was presented as “serious factors in the case”, the report notes these.
Source: Kitty Holland, The Irish Times, 30/11/15
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