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HSE accused of failing to heed abuse warning regarding foster child with intellectual disabilities

The foster child, who cannot speak, lived at the foster home in the southeast for 20 years between 1989 and 2009.

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THE HSE HAS been accused of ignoring a warning it allegedly received regarding abuse being perpetrated by the owners of a foster home in the southeast of the country.

It is alleged that a social worker and whistleblower first made a specific complaint to the HSE regarding injuries, consistent with sexual abuse, to a resident at the home in 2009.

That complaint concerned an adult woman with severe intellectual disabilities who had first been placed in the home in 1989.

It is now alleged that the HSE was first warned in 1995 that one of the two foster parents in the home may have been sexually abusing residents by the UK authorities after a former resident who had moved to Britain had made claims of being sexually assaulted during her stay at the home.

Despite no further foster placements being made by the health service at the home from 1995, the woman remained living there until the whistleblower’s 2009 complaint.

It’s understood that the whistleblower has now made a Garda statement accusing HSE employees of criminal negligence.

The HSE has claimed to the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which has been investigating the issue for some time, that it apologised to the woman in question at a meeting with her and the whistleblower in early December of last year.

No apology

JOHN DEASY FINE GAELS ALCOHOL ABUSE PLAN John Deasy Gareth Chaney / Rollingnews.ie Gareth Chaney / Rollingnews.ie / Rollingnews.ie

Speaking to This Week on RTE radio the whistleblower denied that any apology had been made:

“The first I heard of an apology at all was when contacted by the media. A meeting did take place in early December, but no apology was either made or offered by the HSE at that meeting.

The suggestion that a formal letter was drafted and issued at our agency’s insistence is just outrageous.

She went on to describe the suggestion of an apology as being “typical of the HSE culture”.

The whistleblower has now called for a full commission of inquiry into the issues she has raised, describing herself as being “at the end of my tether after six and a half years of this”.

Fine Gael TD John Deasy, a member of the PAC, told the same programme that the issue had “shocked me to my core”.

“The problem with this whole issue is it’s mostly nameless and faceless – many of the people concerned are non-verbal,” he said.

We’ve exhausted pretty much every line and we’re at the end of the line. We’re relying on the gardaí now to make a final stab at doing something about this.

Deasy described how one non-verbal resident who was taken from the home in the past had to have seven teeth removed in hospital.

The PAC had earlier obtained a copy of a report commissioned by the HSE into the goings-on at the home between the years 1983 and 1995 via a Freedom of Information request.

The HSE says that it has “apologised for the failings identified in the inquiry reports” in a statement.

“The HSE has apologised for the failings identified in the inquiry reports and for the poor care received by those placed with the foster family, in particular, the person who was the subject of the Conal Devine report, who has been apologised to in person. In recent days, it has been stated in the media that no formal apology was offered by the HSE to the service user or her birth mother.”

The HSE strongly refutes this assertion. The HSE wishes to clarify that the apology offered at the meeting with the service user, and by telephone with her birth mother on 10 December last year, while offered verbally by senior HSE staff from the region’s Disability Services, was a formal apology.

“At all stages of this process, the HSE and the Investigations Teams have engaged directly with An Garda Siochana and have co-operated fully with full sharing of all information. To date, it has not been possible to publish the reports as An Garda Siochana has advised that the publication might interfere with their ongoing criminal investigations.”

However, the HSE reiterates that it does intend to publish both reports as soon as possible once clearance has been received to do so.

Read: “Those who sell drugs don’t give a damn about human life”

Read: Will Fine Gael join forces with Fianna Fáil?

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20 Comments
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    Mute Matt Connolly
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    Jan 24th 2016, 3:27 PM

    ….is this another incident they will “learn” from?

    Accountability HAS to be an election issue.

    171
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    Mute Brendan Hughes
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    Jan 24th 2016, 6:57 PM

    No no. It’s all ok now. They said sorry. So leave them alone and let them get on with ignoring other kids in their care.

    55
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    Mute Stephen murphy
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    Jan 24th 2016, 8:32 PM

    No such thing, Accountability is a dirty word.

    29
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    Mute Brendan
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    Jan 24th 2016, 9:34 PM

    As someone who works in the Hse I can tell first hand that complaints upon staff from other staff members is something no one wants to deal with, there are people with many complaints against them with many knowing and seeing first hand they are true yet after the big Hse investigation the people still remain in their post in the exact same roll, I actually had myself transferred to another place to get away from the lack of management and pussy footing around dealing with staff properly best move I ever made

    38
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    Mute Brian Ward
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    Jan 24th 2016, 3:52 PM

    If the HSE is ever to be reformed then the only way to do it is to appoint an independent professional who is assessed and signed off on by ALL parties. This professional is then given the task of reforming the management and running the HSE. They are given a set timeframe and targets. They are then allowed to cull the dead wastage that pervades the HSE on the administration side and use the savings to improve the healthcare side of things. They will have the advantage of not worrying about getting re-elected as their role is to reach their targets and if that means making unpopular decisions then so be it. If they are appointed by an all party committee then none of the usual blame games can erupt as all parties will have made the decision to appoint the person.

    The HSE employs 100,000 people and I would bet that you could get rid of 10% of them tomorrow morning and nothing would be disrupted, that’s how useless their roles are.

    98
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    Mute Ciarán Masterson
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    Jan 24th 2016, 5:31 PM

    @Brian Ward

    You can blame the Labour party for the lack of radical reform in the Irish health service.

    All of the health service unions are responsible for the predicament of the health service, not just the ones that represent administrators. The following article was written by GP Dr Brendan O’Shea.

    http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/nurses-must-allow-trolleys-on-wards-34351707.html

    “I believe the nurses are wrong in trying to frustrate it and there is a sense they are playing silly industrial relations games.

    It should be part of any escalation procedures to alleviate the pressure when trolley traffic reaches a certain crisis.

    Any attempts to obstruct it are akin to terrorists hiding themselves among unfortunate hostages.

    Just like in bus disputes where passengers end up being kicked around, it is now the turn of the patient.

    Doctors’ unions are also guilty of this when the occasion arises.”

    23
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    Mute littleone
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    Jan 24th 2016, 3:33 PM

    HSE never apologise and never learn. The incompetence and mismanagement are a disgrace. The government is a disgrace. From personal experience in 2007 in regards to portlaoise.

    92
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    Mute mick1
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    Jan 24th 2016, 3:27 PM

    The wasters at the hse strike again . I wonder do any of these people ly awake at night worrying about the way people are left on trolleys and treated like animals . I think not !!!!!

    90
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    Mute William Clay
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    Jan 24th 2016, 3:42 PM

    Senior management have had 30% salary increases since 2012, I’d say that’s all they think about, period.

    97
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    Mute Martin Byrne
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    Jan 24th 2016, 4:31 PM

    I know many foster parents who are living saints. The social workers they were assigned were dreadful in general. I mean gobsmackingly awful to the level of being dangerous. That’s why the very few bad foster homes can exist.

    76
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    Mute Mary Scanlon
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    Jan 24th 2016, 4:33 PM

    How many more similar cases are out there? It truly is shameful. We do have very good people e.g. the social worker and the whistleblower, trying to protect and stand up for such vulnerable people. Let us not lose sight of that.

    64
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    Mute Ciarán Masterson
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    Jan 24th 2016, 5:35 PM

    @Mary Scanlon

    I couldn’t agree more. If HSE employees were aware that vulnerable people were at risk and failed to take appropriate action then I hope that they will be crucified.

    40
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    Mute john mccarthy
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    Jan 24th 2016, 5:07 PM

    The public disservice.

    Who gets sacked ? Nobody.

    Carry on as normal.

    43
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    Mute D H
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    Jan 24th 2016, 5:45 PM

    Its the irish way….we are too accepting of incompetence from our politicians to our civil servants….never any accountability

    31
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    Mute Michael Lynch
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    Jan 24th 2016, 7:14 PM

    Dead right D H. Buck stops nowhere in the Land of Saints and Scholars.

    13
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    Mute Kerry Wynne
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    Jan 24th 2016, 3:54 PM

    Yet another shameful indictment of the so called ‘establishment in this country. This news predates the HSE so there are many Health Boards, Ministers for Health and others responsible for ignoring what was going. on. The first report was made in 1995 which predates the HSE by 10 years. They are all equally responsible but of course in this country very few have to take responsibility for their actions or are held accountable.

    In any other jurisdiction’ heads would roll’ with resignations, removal from posts etc. Apologies are useless and worthless as can be seen by the same ‘mistakes’ being made over and over again. Time for those responsible to be made face the consequences.

    In recent times we have had politician after politician tell us how much they care for those who suffer abuse. Yet again their mealy mouthed words are shown up to be hypocritical. Time for them too to walk the walk.

    42
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    Mute Ciarán Masterson
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    Jan 24th 2016, 5:46 PM

    Justine McCarthy wrote about this case for this week’s edition of The Sunday Times.

    According to her, the DPP decided not to press charges in relation to five garda files dealing with alleged negligence and abuse in the home and one of the foster parents allegedly committed sexual assault and rape with the use of instruments (the foster father, I assume) is deceased.

    I commend the social worker who blew the whistle.

    Sadly, some members of staff of the health boards didn’t care about children who were neglected and sexually abused by one or both of their parents, i.e. the Kilkenny and Roscommon incest and McColgan family cases.

    In the Roscommon incest case, the members of health board staff who were involved in that case could have appealed against the injunction that the mother had obtained (the evidence of neglect was as clear as a summer’s day) but they didn’t bother.

    34
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    Mute Fiona deFreyne
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    Jan 24th 2016, 6:12 PM

    In the Roscommon case, an ultra right wing Catholic group funded an expensive legal challenge and obrptiained an injunction. The local health Board did not have the legal budget to appeal.

    It’s dangerous when extremely well funded religious extremists can use lawyers to frustrate necessary interventions in very serious rape and incest cases. I’m pleased to say that a book is being written about this dreadful scandal, exposing the details but not the identities. The book includes details of the financial funding. Keep the religious extremists out of the social servuces area. Ideology causes terrible problems.

    37
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    Mute Ciarán Masterson
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    Jan 24th 2016, 7:37 PM

    @Fiona deFreyne

    The health board could have allocated money to its legal budget to appeal on the grounds of what was then Article 42.5 of the Constitution, which permitted the removal of children from parents if the parents fail in their duty. Given that the health board was supposed to protect the vulnerable, taking legal action to protect the vulnerable should have been a priority.

    The health board could have informed the Gardaí of the neglect. Then the Gardaí could have arrested the parents for child neglect and that would have provided grounds for taking the children into care. Child neglect is a criminal offence, you know.

    Stop making excuses for health board members of staff who didn’t do their jobs properly.

    19
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