Tusla, the child protection and welfare agency, says it’s been in direct contact with the HSE regarding the treatment of young mental health patients in South Kerry.
Tusla says around 20 children, who failed to receive correct treatment at South Kerry CAMHS, would have been in its care or would have been known to the agency.
Sinn Féin TD Mark Ward submitted questions to senior Tusla officials at a joint Oireachtas committee hearing on children and foster care issues.
He asked if there had been any conversations between the HSE and Tusla following the publication of the Maskey report.
The report found that significant harm was caused to 46 children who were under the care of one junior doctor at South Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
A further 227 were exposed to the risk of significant harm due to that doctor’s over-prescribing of medication while another 13 children were put at risk of harm while under the care of other doctors.
Tusla’s director of services and integration, Kate Duggan, told Deputy Ward there had been direct contact between the agency’s regional chief officer for the South and the HSE’s chief officer.
She said, where appropriate, social workers from Tusla had accompanied those children, who were in its care, on some visits with psychiatrists.
The agency’s CEO Bernard Gloster said the normal role of a Tusla social worker in such a context is to ensure that the mental health services professional would have the social work assessment and social care profile of the child, to help in their CAMHS assessment.
Deputy Mark Ward said parents told him they felt that not only had CAMHS failed their children but that Tusla had also let them down with this process.
