Last month, in the aftermath of the shocking attack on a ten year old girl near the Citywest Asylum hub, Tusla issued a statement that is amongst the most disgusting things ever issued by an Irish State agency.
In that statement, the child and family agency – which was solely responsible for the child’s welfare and well-being – said that she had “absconded” from their care. I know, from conversations in the days after the incident, that the statement had its intended effect. It painted the victim of an abhorrent crime, a child, as partly responsible for her own fate. It conveyed, as it was intended to, an image of a “problem child”. It presented Tusla as the innocent victims of a child’s feckless misbehaviour. The statement had nothing to say either about the alleged perpetrator of a sexual assault, or the agency’s own responsibility for caring for the child in their trust.
Yesterday, and most belatedly, Tusla apologised for that statement in just about the most mealy-mouthed way possible:
“Chief executive of Tusla Kate Duggan apologised for the statement issued while appearing before committee today.
“We’ve certainly taken that on board and I know people have contacted about that,” she said in response to questions from (Sinn Fein TD – ed) Claire Kerrane.
“So thank you for that, and we do apologise for that statement and the way it was released, and the impact of it, and the wording around it.”
The apology here, really, is meaningless. In the first instance, it is not the public that deserves or requires an apology – it is the child in the agency’s care who was publicly slandered within hours of what will hopefully remain forever the worst moment of her life.
In the second instance, anybody can be sorry after the fact. It remains the case that somebody in Tusla – presumably, given the circumstances, at a high level – signed off on that victim-blaming claptrap and issued it to the national media. It remains the case that the statement was carefully crafted by professional media relations figures to paint a child in the agency’s care in a certain light. The statement itself, disgusting as it is, is not the problem.
The instinct is the problem.
And has that instinct changed? No, it has not. Here is more of Kate Duggan at the Oireachtas:
“Kate Duggan said that she understands the concerns of the wider public after “significant” incidents involving young people who had received State care, but emphasised that most children in care are “thriving”.
She said that several children in care go missing a day, either from school or while on a trip….
…. “So there’s areas of our services that are working really well, that are fully compliant, but in areas where we do not have the staffing relative to the demand, we are struggling to be compliant.”
She said that the latest figures show there are 5,866 children in the care of Tusla, 87pc of whom are in foster care and “who are thriving”. Nine in 10 of children in State care are in education, she added.”
A situation where several children a day go missing from an agency with an absolutely enormous budget and only one job – the care of children – is objectively ludicrous. What is more ludicrous is the chief executive of that organisation then defending this situation on the basis that “most” of the children in her care are “thriving”.
We should not be unreasonable people – of course when dealing with troubled children, there will be the occasional incident of a runaway. Perfection is not obtainable. But multiple runaways every single day is an enormous red flag of institutional failure, especially when combined with high profile cases of catastrophic apparent failure, such as in the cases of Kyran Durnin and Daniel Arubose.
It should of course be appreciated that children who end up in the care of Tusla often – not exclusively but often – come from troubled situations and unhappy homes. It should be appreciated that many of them have challenging backgrounds and special needs. But here’s the thing: This is why Tusla has the enormous budget it does. This year alone it will receive €1.3billion from the taxpayer.
To put this in context, that total funding equates to an annual budget of over €220,000 for every child in Tusla’s care. So, for every single child – even those with learning difficulties or behavioural issues – the state agency has over two hundred thousand annually to fund their care. Or a million quid per child every five years. With funding like that, is the state not entitled to expect that incidents of children going missing would be vastly lower than they are?
My question, really, is this: Of that enormous funding, what portion actually goes directly on the care of children? And what portion is directed to other activities, such as employing public relations advisers to issue victim blaming statements attacking children when matters go awry, and advising the Chief Executive on how to “emphasise the positive” when she’s in front of an Oireachtas Committee?
If ever an agency of the state needed a root and branch forensic audit of its spending and priorities, it is Tusla. And the Chief Executive, if she meant that apology, should have had the decency to resign.