Ireland’s health watchdog, Hiqa has said that there were over 70 notifications of alleged abuse against disabled children in care last year.
Of the 175 notifications they received, 72 allegations were of suspected of confirmed abuse.
These figures mean that these types of allegations are now the most common against centres responsible for disabled children.
38 notifications were also made regarding serious injury to residents with another 11 of misconduct by a registered provider or staff members.
One notification was made after the unexpected death of a resident after they were brought to hospital.
Centres are legally required to notify the independent body on certain types of incidents which differs from a complaint.
An outbreak of certain diseases or unexplained absence of a resident are just some of the incidents that must be notified to the watchdog.
The body conducted 78 inspections last year on centres for disabled children with 42 of these being registered inspections while 36 were monitoring inspections.
The report also highlighted that last year, 7% or children in foster care had no social worker and were unnecessarily at risk because there was no support available to them.
You can read to full report here.
