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THE CHILD AND Family Agency would have a ’statutory duty’ to provide aftercare if legislation published today comes into law.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald has revealed the General Scheme and Heads of the Aftercare Bill 2014.
Aftercare is defined as supports offered when a young adult leaves statutory care. As of December 2013, 1,093 were in receipt of such services.
Under the current Child Care Act 1991, the Child and Family Agency only has a duty of care up until the age of 18.
Today’s legislation would require an aftercare plan to be put in place.
“It is crucial that an aftercare plan is prepared to identify the supports that young people need leaving care as they transition to adulthood,” the Minister said.
A consistent implementation of aftercare planning should assist in improving the effectiveness of existing services for these young people leaving care.
A HSE report last year highlighted incidents where some of those who had been in care died after making the transition to independent living.
One man began to abuse alcohol and drugs at 16 and lived in two different foster homes up until the age of 18.
His social worker tried to get him to engage with different services and he was offered drug treatment but declined He was offered aftercare by the HSE when he turned 18 and he made contact with a counselling service prior to taking his own life in 2010.
The review team said his suicide appears to be “pre-meditated” as he called a number of family members that morning and told one of them it was “time to go to sleep for good”.
Misadventure
Another man died by misadventure in the year after leaving care.
His girlfriend had recently given birth to a baby and he had spend time in various different types of accommodation.
Staff noticed a rise in his poly drug use including heroin, crack, alcohol and cocaine prior to this death.
Helplines:
Samaritans 1850 60 90 90 or email jo@samaritans.org
Teen-Line Ireland 1800 833 634
Console 1800 201 890
Aware 1890 303 302
Pieta House 01 601 0000 or email mary@pieta.ie
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Fair play to him. Nice to see a young man trying to engage with the people. They usually only do this once every 5 years to get elected. And when does being an LGBT activist make you gay. I would also like to see rights for LGBT community and am married with 2 kids. Fair play to him
Question 1: why does a suburban sprawl on the outskirts of a relatively small city require a separate mayor?
Question 2: expenses are bleedin’ deadly right?
Question 3: I’m sorry, and you are?
South Dublin County has the fourth highest population for a council area in the country. Do you believe we deserve less representation for living close to a large city?
To be honest, I think a city of under 1.5m people having four separate mayors & councils is utterly ridiculous. Even if we have to retain the four separate councils, there should be one mayor over them all. There are ways to do this even if not the perfectly logical suggestion for a directly elected mayor which was rejected by Fingal council.
If you look at our national population you really have to wonder about the amount of political representation we currently enjoy. We’re about the size of greater Manchester who have a 12 person council governing them, and then a 2 house national parliament above that, and a queen. We have councils for each county/city (and we define cities in pretty questionable ways), 2 Houses of Parliament and a president, yet when the fat was being trimmed only town councils came in to question. Do we benefit from this excessive representation, or is it a costly hindrance to actually getting things done?
London has a population of 8.3 million. It has 33 local authorities all with their own mayor. It also has a London assembly as well as the office of the Mayor of London. And 4 is too much?
Ask him why he joined SF and how he reconciled his liberal agenda with their kangaroo courts, murder and rape?
Just reply on your Facebook and Twitter. No need to move away from the two
Tumblr is just as good,I’ve lost countless searching throughuser created content, most of it is brilliant,
Tumblr allows you to ask questions anonymously, maybe some people don’t feel comfortable asking publicly via Twitter or Facebook.
Because neither Facebook nor Twitter can be anonymous?
By the way well done Mayor
If he thinks engaging with young people and listening to what people want is the right way for politicians and politics to move forward in this country then he’s in the wrong place altogether. Seems to me that there’s nothing wrong with the “promise earth moon and stars to people to get elected, ignore and deprive systems that need the most help when you do (health, & education for example) then seek out every possible way to impose even more taxes on the mist taxed population in Europe”. Just my opinion tho.
Surprised he doesn’t do a Reddit AMA!
Tom only thing you can do is throw dirt..why not ask him yourself if you are genuinely interested though I fear you would not be willing to listen so closed is your mind
have your say