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A statement based on an investigation into provision by the Department of Education and Skills and the HSE for a child in care

  • July 2013
  • Type: Investigation
  • Topic: Children in care, Education

In September 2010 this Office received a complaint from a Guardian

ad litem (GAL) acting on behalf of a separated child, then aged 13 years, who was in the care of the HSE. This complaint was made through and supported by the GAL’s solicitor. The role of a GAL is to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings about their care, to formulate an opinion on what is in the child’s best interests and to report both of these to the courts. GALs can only be appointed to children in care by the courts.

The GAL informed the Office that the child was permanently excluded from his school in May 2008 due to behavioural issues. The GAL’s legal representative further advised that these behavioural issues needed to be viewed in the context of recent separation from his mother and siblings, a violent family death and inadequate care from his father. Between June and October 2009 the child was in a non-EU state with his father, but returned as a separated child in October 2009. He was subsequently placed in foster care by the HSE.

Having been permanently excluded from his school in May 2008, the child did not return to full – time education until March 2010 as no school placement could be found for him, despite applications being made to in excess of 26 schools by the HSE with the assistance of the GAL and the National Education Welfare Board (NEWB). An application for Home Tuition was made on his behalf by the NEWB and Home Tuition of nine hours per week was provided by the Department of Education and Skills (hereafter the Department) for the majority of the period during which the child was out of school.

The GAL and solicitor contend that despite the involvement of the NEWB and the HSE the child remained outside mainstream school for almost two years. This, they contend, is the result of a lack of management of the child’s education by the Department. They contend that a school placement is the child’s right and that policy and procedures should be put in place to ensure that children are not left without this provision.

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  • July 2013
  • Type: Investigation
  • Topic: Children in care, Education

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