Homeless children with disabilities are not being prioritised for housing, the office of the Children's Ombudsman has warned.
Dr Niall Muldoon warned in the 2016 Ombudsman report that children's rights aren't being respected and promoted.
Almost 1700 new complaints were made to the office last year - a 3 pe cent increase on 2015, and a 47 per cent jump since 2010.
Almost half of the people who contacted the Ombudsman were concerned about schools, while nearly a quarter complained about the Child and Family Agency, Tusla.
Director of Investigations, Nuala Ward, has stressed the need to protect the rights of children with disabilities, especially those suffering from homelessness. She said, "There is an urgent need to ensure adequate provision of family-friendly emergency accommodation so that normal family routines can be maintained as much as possible."
Follow us on Instagram for coverage of the launch of our Annual Report. #YourOCO pic.twitter.com/CdEfG6vrDT
— OmbudsmanForChildren (@OCO_ireland) 23 May 2017
Family homelessness has hit a crisis point, with about 1,000 families in emergency accommodation. Housing Minister Simon Coveney promised last year that all families would be out of hotels and B&Bs by July. There are plans to move homeless families in Dublin into 'hub' facilities in the city which include buildings such as hotels, church-owned buildings, large family houses and industrial premises. But these measures won't be put in place until after July 1.
The report details the frustrating case of one mother of a 10-year-old boy with a progressive disability, who complained that she had been on the local authority’s housing list for about seven years and had not been offered accommodation suitable to her son’s needs.
Her first language was not English and she said the local authority had not provided clear information on the housing application process.
The OCO investigation found many shortcomings on the part of the council, and the boy’s family was offered specially adapted accommodation; the council also committed to addressing some of the issues raised by the OCO.
Dr Muldoon was also critical of the Child and Family Agency Tusla, saying that it was operating as a 'crisis agency' with 'clear inconsistencies'.
He said, "Children's rights remain a critical issue in Irish society."
His office dealt with 1,682 complaints last year, an increase of 3 per cent when compared with 2015, and a rise of 47 per compared to 2010.
The majority of complaints related to education, with 46 per cent of complaints detailing issues with schools, handling of bullying incidents and alleged professional misconduct by teachers.
Children's rights are far reaching. They also deserve to have these rights respected. They deserve the right to…. pic.twitter.com/pI2iSwU3AM
— OmbudsmanForChildren (@OCO_ireland) 17 May 2017
There was an increase in the number of complaints relating to health services for children and young people. Criticisms in 2016 related to health services included: access to primary care services such as psychology; speech and language and orthodontic services; waiting lists for hospital procedures; access to provision for children with disabilities and access to specialist child and adolescent mental health services.
21 children awaiting hip operations were put on hold over a fax mix-up. One 18-month-old girl named Ciara was waiting for a referral for a hip scan, which is done by fax. The OCO report says, "Ciara’s parents told us that the method of referral from one hospital to another was done by fax. This resulted in one hospital sending the referral but the other hospital not receiving it. This delay resulted in the failure to diagnose, in a timely way, her condition which then required urgent treatment before she began to walk."
Ciara's parents raised the alarm which led to the OCO discovering that 20 other infants were affected by the fax issue.
The OCO said it then, “Informed the highest level of the HSE of the systemic failure that our examination highlighted”.
