Louth's Ó Murchú highlights need for early family interventions

Specialist health nurses trained in child protection who visit families when children are young could help prevent ‘disaster scenarios’ with Tusla later on, Louth TD Ruairí Ó Murchú has said.

The Sinn Féin TD spoke about early family interventions at the Oireachtas Children’s Committee over the last number of weeks and highlighted how specialised public health nurses to which every child in the country gets access in the early years, a key recommendation in the national early years policy framework, has not been implemented yet. 

Tulsa, the Children’s Rights Alliance and the Ombudsman for Children were among the witnesses before the committee ahead of the Dáil recess. Deputy Ó Murchú spoke about the case of missing child Kyran Durnin and also highlighted the need for early interventions.

He said: "With all the good work and projects that are out there, there is significant need, particularly where drugs meet poverty and chaos. It is about the facility to catch the issues. We know of plenty of cases where sometimes we are too late to the table. 

Read also: Louth County Council welcomes Gum Litter Taskforce to Dundalk

"Specialist public health nurses who could catch issues to make sure referrals happen early were mentioned. Sometimes as early as possible means pre-birth. The other piece involves ensuring we have the correct intervention and that it happens early enough. We have all come across cases where the intervention took too long. 

"I get the idea of keeping families together, but children have been left in really precarious circumstances. In the past week or two, I have dealt with constituents who spoke about drug-dealing party houses. There is a child protection issue regarding children being brought up there - if that is even the correct term. I have a feeling that we fail to take enough action.

"We had the Children's Rights Alliance in here and it spoke of the necessity of having specialised health nurses, and I think there is a plan for that. 

"The idea was that every child and every family would have access to such a nurse and problems could be caught early. We have an insufficient number of interventions and family support inventions that are absolutely necessary. If we could have some of these in play, we might not need Tusla to do some of the more difficult pieces later."

Tanya Ward from the Children’s Rights Alliance told the committee: "If public health nurses were in place in all communities and able to reach all families, they would be able to do that and be able to pick up cases.

"They would be able to intervene and make sure that the right social work response was actually getting to the families as needed. That is something on which the committee could put a focus".