Representation and participation in child care proceedings: what about the voice of the parents?

In Ireland, the Constitution guarantees very strong rights to parents and the family, and there has been a long and unfortunate history of failures to adequately protect children at risk. As a result, there has been much discussion in recent years about the need to improve legal mechanisms designed to protect the rights of children. By comparison, little attention has been given to establishing whether the theoretically strong rights of parents translate into strongly protected rights in practice. This paper presents new empirical evidence on the manner in which child care proceedings in Ireland balance the rights and interests of children and parents, including the rates at which orders are granted, the frequency of and conditions in which legal representation is provided, and the extent to which parents are able to actively participate in proceedings. A number of systemic issues are identified that restrict the capacity of the system to emphasise parental rights and hear the voice of parents to the extent that would be expected when looking at the legal provisions in isolation.

Child care proceedings in non-specialist courts: the experience in Ireland

It is widely accepted that court proceedings concerning child protection are a particularly sensitive type of court proceedings that warrant a different approach to other types of proceedings. Consequently, the use of specialized family or children’s judges or courts is commonplace across Europe and in common law jurisdictions. By contrast, in Ireland, proceedings under the Child Care Act 1991 are heard in the general courts system by judges who mostly do not specialize in child or family law. In principle, the Act itself and the associated case law accept that the vulnerability of the parties and the sensitivity of the issues involved are such that they need to be singled out for a different approach to other court proceedings. However, it is questionable whether this aspiration has been realized in a system where child care proceedings are mostly heard in a general District Court, using the same judges and the same physical facilities used for proceedings such as minor crime and traffic offences. This article draws on the first major qualitative analysis of professional perspectives on child care proceedings in the Irish District Court. It examines evidence from judges, lawyers, social workers, and guardians ad litem and asks whether non-specialist courts are an appropriate venue for proceedings on an issue as complex and sensitive as child protection, or whether the establishment of specialist family courts with dedicated staff and facilities provides a better solution.

Time-limited home-care reablement services for maintaining and improving the functional independence of older adults

Background: Reablement, also known as restorative care, is one possible approach to home-care services for older adults at risk of functional decline. Unlike traditional home-care services, reablement is frequently time-limited (usually six to 12 weeks) and aims to maximise independence by offering an intensive multidisciplinary, person-centred and goal-directed intervention. Objectives: To assess the effects of time-limited home-care reablement services (up to 12 weeks) for maintaining and improving the functional independence of older adults (aged 65 years or more) when compared to usual home-care or wait-list control group. Search methods: We searched the following databases with no language restrictions during April to June 2015: the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL); MEDLINE (OvidSP); Embase (OvidSP); PsycINFO (OvidSP); ERIC; Sociological Abstracts; ProQuest Dissertations and Theses; CINAHL (EBSCOhost); SIGLE (OpenGrey); AgeLine and Social Care Online. We also searched the reference lists of relevant studies and reviews as well as contacting authors in the field. Selection criteria: We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), cluster randomised or quasi-randomised trials of time-limited reablement services for older adults (aged 65 years or more) delivered in their home; and incorporated a usual home-care or wait-list control group. Data collection and analysis: Two authors independently assessed studies for inclusion, extracted data, assessed the risk of bias of individual studies and considered quality of the evidence using GRADE. We contacted study authors for additional information where needed. Main results: Two studies, comparing reablement with usual home-care services with 811 participants, met our eligibility criteria for inclusion; we also identified three potentially eligible studies, but findings were not yet available. One included study was conducted in Western Australia with 750 participants (mean age 82.29 years). The second study was conducted in Norway (61 participants; mean age 79 years). We are very uncertain as to the effects of reablement compared with usual care as the evidence was of very low quality for all of the outcomes reported. The main findings were as follows. Functional status: very low quality evidence suggested that reablement may be slightly more effective than usual care in improving function at nine to 12 months (lower scores reflect greater independence; standardised mean difference (SMD) -0.30; 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.53 to -0.06; 2 studies with 249 participants). Adverse events: reablement may make little or no difference to mortality at 12 months' follow-up (RR 0.97; 95% CI 0.74 to 1.29; 2 studies with 811 participants) or rates of unplanned hospital admission at 24 months (RR 0.94; 95% CI 0.85 to 1.03; 1 study with 750 participants). The very low quality evidence also means we are uncertain whether reablement may influence quality of life (SMD -0.23; 95% CI -0.48 to 0.02; 2 trials with 249 participants) or living arrangements (RR 0.92, 95% CI 0.62 to 1.34; 1 study with 750 participants) at time points up to 12 months. People receiving reablement may be slightly less likely to have been approved for a higher level of personal care than people receiving usual care over the 24 months' follow-up (RR 0.87; 95% CI 0.77 to 0.98; 1 trial, 750 participants). Similarly, although there may be a small reduction in total aggregated home and healthcare costs over the 24-month follow-up (reablement: AUD 19,888; usual care: AUD 22,757; 1 trial with 750 participants), we are uncertain about the size and importance of these effects as the results were based on very low quality evidence. Neither study reported user satisfaction with the service. Authors' conclusions: There is considerable uncertainty regarding the effects of reablement as the evidence was of very low quality according to our GRADE ratings. Therefore, the effectiveness of reablement services cannot be supported or refuted until more robust evidence becomes available. There is an urgent need for high quality trials across different health and social care systems due to the increasingly high profile of reablement services in policy and practice in several countries.

Practice links [Issue 36, February 2010]

Practice Links is a free e-publication for practitioners working in Irish social services, voluntary and nongovernmental sectors. Practice Links was created to enable practitioners to keep up-to-date with new publications, electronic resources and conference opportunities. Issue 36 features articles on equine assisted personal development, the National Child Care Information System and a report on Fieldwork Training for Social Workers

Practice links [Issue 51, February 2013]

Practice Links is a free e-publication for practitioners working in Irish social services, voluntary and nongovernmental sectors. Practice Links was created to enable practitioners to keep up-to-date with new publications, electronic resources and conference opportunities. Issue 51 contains advice for social workers regarding the use of social media. It also contains reviews on Cognitive-­‐behavioral interventions for children who have been sexually abused and Psycho-social interventions for reducing anti-psychotic medication in care home residents.

The double bind for non-traditional families in post-primary settings; to tell or not to tell their family identity

This thesis involved researching normative family discourses which are mediated through educational settings. The traditional family, consisting of father, mother and children all living together in one house is no longer reflective of the home situation of many Irish students (Lunn and Fahey, 2011). My study problematizes the dominant discourses which reflect how family differences are managed and recognised in schools. A framework using Foucauldian post structural critical analysis traces family stratification through the organisation of institutional and interpersonal relations at micro level in four post-primary schools. Standardising procedures such as the suppression of intimate relations between and among teacher and student, as well as the linear ordering of intergenerational relations, such as teacher/student and adult/child are critiqued. Normalising discourses operate in practices such as notes home which presume two parents together. Teacher assumptions about heterosexual two-parent families make it difficult for students to be open about a family setup that is constructed as different to the rest of the schools'. The management of family difference and deficit through pastoral care structures suggests a school-based politics of family adjustment. These practices beg the question whether families are better off not telling the school about their family identity. My thesis will be of interest to educational research and educational policy because it highlights how changing demographics such as family compositions are mis-conceptualised in schools, as well as revealing the changing forms of family governance through regimes such as pastoral care. This analysis allows for the existence of, and a valuing for, alternative modes of family existence, so that future curricular and legal discourses can be challenged in the interest of equity and social justice.