The Child Care Law Reporting Project (CCLRP) has gone live
and can be accessed from the following site http://www.childlawproject.ie/
Its goal is that members of the public and professionals can
gain an insight into the reasons and issues involving children being taken into
care. It plans to publish about 10 per
cent of all child care court cases, which will be randomly selected and broadly
representative of the courts around the country. So, for instance, about 40 per cent of cases would
be from the Dublin Metropolitan District Court as that accounts for 40 per cent
of the national average and it will attempt to apply a representative figure nationally.
A protocol has been established to ensure that there is no
information that could lead to the identification of the families or children
involved. This means that Social Workers
and Judges can't be named. The full protocol
is available at http://www.childlawproject.ie/protocol/
At the moment, there are nearly 30 Case Histories online,
which will increase as the project continues. They can be read here
http://www.childlawproject.ie/publications/
Another part of the project is the publishing of Child Care
Statistics. At the moment, there are
only statistics for 2011 available, which can be looked at here
http://www.childlawproject.ie/statistics/
The CCLRP plans on gathering court data and will issue
reports with statistics, trends and analysis from which it will issue recommendations.
The CCLRP is supervised by an oversight committee composed
of Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness, former judge of the Supreme Court and
former President of the Law Reform Commission; Dr Helen Buckley, Associate
Professor in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, TCD; Dr Geoffrey
Shannon, Government Rapporteur on Child Protection; P J Fitzpatrick, former CEO
of the Courts Service; Noeline Blackwell, director general of FLAC; and Tanya
Ward, director of the Childrens Rights Alliance.
