The District Court made care orders for four children under section 18 of the Child Care Act 1991 after finding that they had been ill-treated and neglected and that their health, development and welfare had been avoidably impaired or neglected.
In a judgment delivered at Wexford District Court on 13 November 2018, Judge Brian O’Shea said the children required care and protection they were unlikely to receive without court orders. He found that care orders, rather than supervision orders, were appropriate, necessary and proportionate.
The children, identified as KL, LL, LM and JM, had been in the full-time care of the Child and Family Agency under interim orders since November 2016. Their mother, MM, and the father of the two younger children, EM, consented to the care orders on the basis that the agency would review their circumstances after two years. The judgment records that KG, who had died, was the father of the two older children.
The judge found that the three older children had suffered significant psychological harm from witnessing violence, alongside ill-treatment and neglect. He said the children’s lives had been marked by a lack of safety and stability, and that the environment had affected their ability to accept care and form relationships. He found that the children were then in secure and stable homes and progressing at school. The court also found that the parents did not then have the capacity to meet the children’s complex emotional and psychological needs.
The orders commit all four children to the agency’s care for the remainder of their childhood. The agency has discretion over access, including sibling contact, which is to be supervised unless the agency decides supervision is no longer needed. The court directed the agency to fund appropriate medical, psychological and therapeutic services tailored to each child, and dispensed with parental consent requirements for treatment and travel documents. For travel outside the jurisdiction, the agency must give the parents at least two weeks’ written notice of the fact and purpose.
The court also ordered annual reviews and directed that the agency produce a satisfactory care plan addressing the guardian ad litem’s recommendations. The guardian is to remain appointed and be involved in preparing the plan. The agency must re-enter the case without delay in specified circumstances, including a change in the children’s foster placement or a lapse in social-work allocation. A mention was scheduled for 10 June 2019 to set a review hearing and consider an updated care plan. The court expressly said it was not retaining seisin of the matter.