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ISSN 1357-5279 On this page you can view the full text of the Foreword ] Contents Foreword Child Protection and Welfare Social Work in Northern
Ireland and the Republic: Commonalities, Divergences and Possibilities
Cross-Border Rural Childcare Project
Beyond Border-Protecting Children on the Island of
Ireland
Amnesty International and Human Rights Education
Family Support in Ireland: Developing Strategic
Implementation
What Children Know About Their Birth Circumstances in
Stepfamily Adoption in the Republic of Ireland
Conference report A multidisciplinary Handbook of Child and Adolescent Mental Health for Front-line Professionals Debra Wilson ____________ Child Welfare in Ireland—Travelling Forward? John Pinkerton, Head of School, School of Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland It has always seemed to me that one of the core functions of Child Care in Practice is to provide a means to check out what is happening in the world of children’s services both within Northern Ireland and elsewhere. This all-Ireland edition of the journal is a good illustration of how well it performs that function. It brings together a stimulating and wide-ranging mixture of accounts of policy and practice, covering in a variety of ways family support, child protection, adoption, and human rights. Most of the activity described is taking place on a North/South cross-border basis and all of it focuses on actual activity on behalf of children. Martin Davies (Emeritus Professor of Social Work at the University of East Anglia) has pointed to a tendency for journal material, at least within social work, to be ‘think pieces, conceptual analyses, explorations of theory or philosophy’ (Davies, 2003). Not so for this journal. It holds to its title — In Practice. Which is not to say that there is no place in its pages for theory; as is evidenced by the heavily theorised account of child protection both sides of the border in this edition (Skehill). Each of the six articles is of interest in its own right; but, in addition, taken as a set they prompt, as no doubt the editorial committee intended, the more general question of what is happening in child welfare on the island of Ireland. That was also the question which interested myself and Robbie Gilligan (Professor of Social Work, Trinity College Dublin) when, almost 10 years ago now, we co-edited a Special Irish Issue of Children & Society (Pinkerton & Gilligan, 1995). As with this edition of Child Care in Practice, we attempted to bring together material that would provide a ‘flavour of the energy and breadth of work underway’ (p. 3) in Irish child welfare. Neither set of articles could claim to be representative, but they do provide an interesting means to consider whether the ‘pervasive sense of possibility’ (p. 3) which we identified as the key characteristic of Ireland’s children’s services in the mid 1990s was anything more that pre-Millennium enthusiasm. The years spanning 2000 have seen significant change in both parts of Ireland—diversifying family structures and life styles, the ebbing authority of both organised religion and politics over how people think and act, the immediacy of cultural difference brought through both new communications technology and inward migration. Yet in the South the peaking of the era of the Celtic Tiger and in the North the interminable stops and starts of the peace process convey, perhaps more than anything, a sense of unrealised potential. Has child welfare succumbed to that prevailing mood? There is undoubtedly a downside to any overview of Irish child welfare — not least the continuation of shaming levels of child and family poverty. This was recently highlighted by research in the North showing that 37% of children are growing up in poor households and suggesting a comparable situation in the South (Hillyard et al., 2003). In addition, there are the political constraints of not just the faltering peace process in the North but also the slumping vision and capacity in the South. Despite some growth in resources, tightening purse-strings in the South and the continued under spending by GB comparisons in the North give real cause for concern. There is still a tendency to inertia in the established policy-making and service-delivery structures and processes. New policies and services are by there nature fragile and are too often sidelined to the margins, bereft of the sustained technical and administrative capacity required to mainstream them. However, the articles gathered together here provide something of an antidote to such a pessimistic account. It is not only that they show a brighter side to what is going on but they also read like progress reports. There emerges a strong sense of innovative, child-centred work programmes underway; whether it is the revision of project materials for promoting Human Rights in schools (Murphy & Ruane), the application for funding to establish an all-Ireland rural child care observatory (Walmsley & Fitzpatrick) or the call for comprehensive guidelines for adopting couples on ‘telling’ (Loftus). In their different areas and in their different ways, the activities described in the articles all tell a story of informed, detailed and complicated work being undertaken and advances being made. They also reflect an emerging strategic consensus around a number of intertwined themes:
This is not to suggest a simple convergence — a North/South parity to replace the East/West one. The world is, and always has been, more complex than that (Pinkerton 2003). In addition the emerging consensus around an agenda for children and young people is not just an all-Ireland one but one that also reflects GB and international experience and understanding. As work in progress, this collection of articles certainly registers just how much needs to be done to enhance the status and promote the quality of life for children and young people across Ireland. At the same time, the work described encourages a confidence in the competence of the adults involved to build the necessary alliances amongst themselves and with children and young people, families and neighbourhoods. There is every reason to believe that, over the next 10 years on both sides of the border, and increasingly on a cross-border basis, further advances will be made for and with children in strengthening existing service and policy infrastructure, in building on successes and learning from mistakes, in taking the calculated risks necessary for innovation, in documenting and researching the process and outcomes. The articles to be found in this journal are symptomatic of how we, children and young people and those who work with and for them, are travelling forward. At least that is my judgement on how the potential of a decade ago is being realised. It is just one view, but my hope is that in setting it out I encourage others to think about this all-Ireland Child Care in Practice as more than just the sum of its six articles; as a statement on child welfare in Ireland today. References Hillyard, P., Kelly, G., McLaughlin, E., Patsios, D. & Tomlinson, M. (2003). Bare Necessities: poverty and social inclusion in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Democratic Dialogue. Pinkerton, J. (2003). From parity to subsidiarity? Children’s policy in Northern Ireland under New Labour: the case of child welfare. Children and Society, 17, pp. 254 - 260. Pinkerton, J. & Gilligan, R. (eds) (1995). Children & Society — Special Irish Issue, 9(2).
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