A fortnight ago the HSE published the first round of reports from the National Review Panel for Serious Incidents and Child Deaths relating to children known social services within the HSE.
As one has, regrettably, come to expect the report received fleeting coverage in the print and broadcast media. The coverage it did receive was littered [...]

Last Saturday night when disturbances in Tottenham began I tweeted the following “Its a bus and a few cars. Bigger problems in London that 24 hour news doesnt tell you to talk about.Keep calm and carry on. #tottenhamriot“.
It was not my intention to be as dismissive as it now seems I was . Rather, [...]

“It’s often the direct work with the child which is lost in the paperwork, form-filling and filing and administration that makes up much of our jobs. (Social worker, Dublin)
The Health Service Executive’s decision to model their new child protection information system on a failed model illustrates that there is a need to re-consider how we [...]

The identification of offenders as members of a criminal gang is generally not an essential criterion in the prosecution of offences. It is not therefore possible to ascertain the precise number of criminals who are members of criminal gangs operating in this country. Nor is it possible to provide statistics of the kind sought by [...]

The current economic crisis in Ireland has highlighted many of the problems in Irish society that perhaps we all knew were there to a greater or lesser degree. For me the one interesting aspect of the past three years has come in our media. It has been discussed elsewhere (see Gavan Titley’s piece in [...]

The old adage that children should be seen and not heard seems to have been a mantra taken to heart by some members of the political establishment in the run up to the recent general election. As the narrative of the election was dominated by discussions around the country’s fiscal meltdown, children’s issues were reduced [...]