CLOSURE OF MADONNA HOUSE BY SISTERS OF CHARITY (1995)

In her book "Suffer The Little Children" Mary Raftery criticises the Sisters of Charity for closing Madonna House in 1995 (see section A below). This is rather curious given the fact that she demonises the religious orders in general and the Sisters of Charity in particular for their management of Madonna House! Moreover in 1994 the Minister of State at the Department of Social Welfare had given some excellent reasons why the facility had outlived its usefulness (see section B).

Mary Raftery is correct in noting that, since the religious orders withdrew from child care, the State has experienced great problems in dealing with children in need. However many of these problems have been created (or made worse) by Mary Raftery and her kind. The Irish Association of Care Workers have stated that in some institutions, out of control youths will accuse a care worker of child abuse if he tries to enforce discipline. Now where did our delinquents get THAT idea from?

Rory Connor
6 February 2008

(A) Mary Raftery on Closure of Madonna House.

"The Sisters of Charity closed Madonna House in 1995. This contributed to a crisis in child care from which the State has still not recovered. The resulting desperate shortage of places for children in need of short term care has been the subject of almost weekly press reports, with some judges publicly condemning the Government for its lack of action in the area. Hundreds of children ended up in hospitals, bed and breakfasts or Garda stations simply because there was nowhere else to put them. The State's supine dependence on religious orders for the provision of its child care facilities [!!] has left it acutely vulnerable to such crises - it simply has no experience and little knowledge of how to establish an alternative system."

(page 388 of 'Suffer The Little Children' - first published in 1999).

My Comment: Nine years later the State is still unable to cope with a generation of disturbed and violent delinquents who have been taught to believe that they are "victims", that "society" is to blame for their problems and that they deserve "compensation". It was not the Catholic Church who gave them that message.

(B) D?il ?ireann, Debate re Madonna House, 2 June 1994

Ms F. Fitzgerald

Ms F. Fitzgerald: I thank the Chair for giving me an opportunity to raise the closure of Madonna House and the implications for child care. Will the Minister outline the plans of the Department of Health for the future care of children in the care of Madonna House? The Irish Association of Care Workers, an authority in this regard, stated that the closure will create a major void in the already underserviced sector of child care provision. .......................................

Minister of State at the Dept. of Social Welfare Ms Burton
Ms Burton: I confirm to the House that the Minister for Health has been advised by the Sisters of Charity of its decision to phase out Madonna House, the residential home, it operates, which caters for children in the care of the Eastern Health Board.

This decision follows a review by the Order of the future of Madonna House in the light of changing needs and new approaches to the provision of care for children who, for whatever reason, cannot live at home. In its announcement, the Order cited a number of reasons for the closure including: the outdated institutional structure, with its centralised facilities; the physical layout of the buildings and, in particular, the proximity of the five separate units to each other, which make it difficult if not impossible for the units to develop separate services with individual identities and its isolation from the community care areas from where most of its clients come.

Madonna House was originally established by the Sisters of Charity in premises on Merrion Road in the early 1950s to provide temporary care for babies and very young children. The service was transferred to its current premises in Blackrock in the early 1970s which were designed to deal, in the main, with young infants.
In the years since then the demand for residential care for young children has sharply declined.

The policy of the Eastern and other health boards, has been, firstly, to support parents and families so that children can remain at home or, where this is not possible, to provide care for children in a family setting, whether in small residential units or with suitable foster families. This change in approach is in keeping with modern child care thinking and has been endorsed by experts in the field, including the task force on child care services. It is supported by the Minister for Health and is reflected in the Child Care Act with its emphasis on the development of family support services and on providing children with alternative care in the most appropriate settings.

The change in approach can be seen in the fact that in the last ten years the percentage of children in care who are fostered has increased from 50 per cent to almost 75 per cent with a corresponding reduction of the percentage in residential centres from 50 per cent to 25 per cent. The number of children in residential care across the country is now about 750. Madonna House alone had about 60 places making it by far the largest and most institutionalised centre in the entire child care system.

However, while the number of children in residential care has fallen, there has been no reduction in the complexity of the problems that children entering residential care present. Increasingly, the residential services are being asked to deal with children who are the most troubled and the most troublesome, the most damaged and the most disruptive in the child care system.

To put it briefly, Madonna House found itself in a situation where the client group it set out to serve was no longer being placed in residential care. Instead it was being asked to deal with older children with more complex problems which the facility had never been designed or intended to serve.

Undoubtedly the closure will create short term problems for the Eastern Health Board. The first priority is arranging suitable alternative accommodation for the 30 children living in Madonna House. The board has appointed a senior social worker to co-ordinate the relocation of these children. It is hoped that most of them can be placed with foster parents. In this regard, the Minister for Health is making additional staff and other resources available to the board to enable it to quickly recruit more foster parents and to expand its carers' scheme, which provides family care for adolescents.

The board also intends to provide a number of small locally-based family group homes. These facilities will be available to the board on a long term basis to replace the places no longer available at Madonna House.

As both the Deputy and I indicated, the closure of Madonna House is perhaps an inevitable consequence of the shift in emphasis within the child care services from large institutional-type residential care to fostering and small scale family-style residences and I am sure most Members would welcome that development. A number of other residential centres are reviewing their operations to determine what part they will play in the child care services of the future, particularly in the light of the emerging need for more specialised provision for disturbed and damaged children and adolescents. The Minister for Health has asked me to assure the House of his support for any changes or developments which will make our child care services more responsible to current needs. I will convey to him the Deputy's comments in regard to an inspectorate.

The D?il adjourned at 5.10 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 14 June 1994.