6k local children arein need: health chief

Over 6,000 children were deemed ‘children in need’ according to the Corporate Parenting Report for April to September 2012.

Children classed as being in need are any children who are unlikely to have a reasonable standard of health and development or who whose health is likely to be significantly impaired without access to local health and social services. Disabled children are also classed as children in need.

Mr Kieran Downey, the Trust’s Director of Women and Children’s Services, advised members of the Western Trust Board that there were 6,207 children classified as ‘children in need; and 24 unallocated referral during the same period.

“Mr Downey assured members that these referrals had been screened and were assessed as not requiring a child protection intervention,” Board minutes note.

Despite this there were 266 children on the child protection register, which was the lowest number in Northern Ireland, and a decrease over six months.

Thirty-eight children were de-registered as a result of becoming looked after.

Mr Downey said that for the Trust area, 42 per cent of the children on the child protection register had been on the register for over one year.

The Western Trust also had the lowest number of re-registrations in Northern Ireland and Mr Downey told members this “demonstrated the robustness of the Trust’s processes.”

The Trust childcare boss also advised that there were 444 children/young people who were looked after in the Trust area.

The majority of these were placed in foster care.

“For this service Mr Downey said increasing demands such as the facilitation of contact, particularly court directed supervised contact, continued to create challenges for the Trust,” the minutes state.

“He said the amount of contact staff are involved in has the potential to seriously impact on the Trust’s ability to meet all its delegated statutory functions in the looked after arena.

“Mr Downey said that the Trust continues to explore resolutions in relation to this such as the use of voluntary drivers,” they add.

The revelations come as the Campaign to End Child Poverty reveals a third of children in Londonderry and Strabane are living in extreme need.

Londonderry is the poorest place in Northern Ireland and the fourth poorest place in the United Kingdom to grow up.

The new statistics follow a Save the Children report two years ago that showed 40 per cent (11,200) of Londonderry children were living in poverty - by far the highest percentage in Northern Ireland.