Introduction
The Child Law Project has resumed reporting on child protection proceedings and publishes this volume of reports covering attendance at courts since we resumed reporting in May 2025. These reports include cases where judges deplored the number of children without allocated social workers, considered those in unsuitable placements and where placements had broken down, and ruled on cases of severe neglect and where children with special needs were taken into care as their families cannot care for them.
Parental drug addiction, mental health issues and domestic violence continue to feature among the reasons for the Tusla/the Child and Family Agency seeking care orders. A number of cases concern teenage children whose behaviour puts them and members of the public at risk, and opens them to the danger of involvement in criminality. A significant number of the children taken into care have special needs.
The reports below include cases where the intervention of Tusla dramatically improved the situation of children at risk, the best example of which is where a baby who suffered severe non-accidental injuries while in their parents’ care was taken into interim care from the hospital and, two years later, when a full care order was made, was reported to be thriving in foster care and meeting his developmental milestones.
The severe pressure Tusla is experiencing in providing appropriate placements for vulnerable children, especially those with complex needs, the shortage of social workers, so that some children in care have no allocated social worker and delays in assessing the needs of children with behavioural problems and disabilities all feature among the cases described here.
In one case a young girl was repeatedly sexually assaulted when she absconded from a “special emergency arrangement”. While the CFA/Tusla acknowledged that special care (where a child is detained for their own welfare and safety) should be considered, no special care bed was available for her at the time. This was the situation in a number of cases where children were at risk.
A number of unaccompanied minors were taken into care by the CFA/Tusla. While the majority were male, the cases reported include one where a young girl was trafficked into Ireland for sexual exploitation and was found on the street, in poor health, by a member of the public. In another case a newborn baby was taken into care where her mother, who suffered from mental illness, was suspected of being a victim of trafficking.
Both in Dublin and in a provincial city the court heard of dozens of children who did not have an allocated social worker. In Dublin the court asked the CFA/Tusla for an audit of cases where children in care had no social worker despite court direction. 685 breaches of these court orders were identified. In the provincial city the judge reviewed 30 cases where children were unallocated to social workers for a number of months. The judge went through the information she obtained in questionnaires on each case. In a number of the cases a Section 47 direction had been made seeking an allocated social worker. The judge appointed a guardian ad litem (GAL) for the children without a social worker.
The challenges posed for parents having multiple children with special needs were illustrated by one case where five children were autistic. Three of them were taken into care under interim care orders. This was one of a number of cases where the children had special needs and the parents, often parenting alone, could not cope.
Several cases saw newborn babies being taken into care. Frequently this was as a result of drug abuse by the mother, with the baby suffering from drug withdrawal at birth. In one case, however, there was no parental drug abuse, but the CFA considered that the mother, who had come to Ireland from the UK and is autistic, suffered from a mental health issue that the agency considered put her baby at risk. This case is still before the courts.