Search

TUSLA, the Child and Family Agency (the Agency) is1 committed to ensuring the child protection and welfare training provided is designed and delivered in a responsive and effective manner to all who receive it. Two standardised training programmes are currently provided by the Agency personnel: Children First Basic Level Training is delivered to all Agency and Health Service Executive staff by Workforce Development Training Officers; and Keeping Safe also basic level training, is delivered externally by Children First Information and Advice Officers to those working with children and families in voluntary and community services. The Children First Basic Level Training programme that is delivered to Agency Staff2 was introduced by the workforce development team in September 2011 in response to the issuing of the Children First National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children (Department of Children and Youth Affairs, 2011). This basic level training programme was developed as a standardised programme prior to this there were different programmes and approaches nationally. Therefore, since 2011 there have been two standardised Children First Basic Level programmes provided by the [then] HSE and the Child and Family Agency, one for internal staff and one for external voluntary and community services staff. A review of these training programmes was commissioned in 2012 to provide the necessary information for the Agency to make an informed decision on the type and amount of child protection and welfare training each course should contain to ensure the training was meeting the needs of the target groups. non-peer-reviewed

non-peer-reviewed

The aim of this thesis is to critically analyse how the media portray family support provided by the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) in Ireland. In phase one, a newspaper content analysis was conducted on a broad range of national and regional Irish Newspapers over four years which described communication about family support services provided by Ireland’s Child and Family Agency. This is a relatively unknown area of study since the establishment of Ireland’s new Agency. Results showed that although child protection was not used as a specific search term, news items on the Agency and family support were usually directed more towards child protection and children in care. This is important because how the media communicate and frame family support as part of the overall child welfare system is one of the main influences on public understanding and awareness of preventative family support and child welfare services. In phase two, findings from qualitative interviews with journalists and Agency workers found empathy for each other’s roles signifying there may be potential for collaboration to better understand each other’s responsibilities. More positive reporting on good practice in Governmental inspection and review reports is recommended to ensure families in need of support could see that positive procedures and structures are embedded within the Agency. Such reports are often used as sources by journalists who could in turn highlight more positive aspects of the child welfare system. The study also shows the Agency could benefit from proactively promoting their own good news stories consistently in order to change negative perceptions of the Agency. The research shows the importance of better understanding of family support and child protection so that families can access services in a timely way, seek help when they need it and get interventions early that are preventative as well as protective and legal as required. 2022-04-21

The aim of this study is to explore the impact orientation of principal investigators (PIs) of publicly funded medical device research projects. PI impact orientation can be defined as the awareness, attitudes and approaches of principal investigators in relation to the generation and prioritisation of research impact. The methodological approach undertaken was qualitative in nature, involving semistructured, open-ended interviews with a full population sample (n=38) of PIs affiliated with CÚRAM, the SFI Centre for Research in Medical Devices. Applying a thematic analysis approach. findings were gathered into four thematic groups; PI perspectives on impact, factors influencing PI impact orientation, factors inhibiting PI impact orientation, and PI approaches to impact. The main findings of this study include medical device PIs understanding of impact consisting of scientific impact and broader impacts (health, societal, economic and human capital), with many PIs viewing health, economic and human capital impacts as de facto societal impact, or societal impact as a hybrid impact of other categories. PIs were more focused on the shorter-term outputs, or routes to impact, rather than the macro-level impacts of their research. Commercialisation was considered by many PIs as the most effective, and for some the only route to impact. Relevant stakeholders of medical device research were identified, along with factors and inhibitors relating to PI impact orientation. Complexities of impact were identified, including issues of attribution, temporality and lack of common understandings of impact, that led to some misunderstandings and negative perspectives on impact. PI approaches to impact included collaboration strategies, with industry, clinicians, multidisciplinary academics and, to a lesser extent, patients and patient groups. Other approaches to impact offered by PIs included project formation strategies, involving both proactive and reactive behaviours, and career planning and strategising for impact. Using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory, an ecological framework for PI impact orientation was developed from the findings of this study, to support PIs in addressing, mapping and analysing the impact of their research across environmental systems, identifying stakeholders relevant to their research, with the research translation continuum, from basic scientific discovery to point-of-care application, as a frame of reference. A number of recommendations emerged from these findings, for medical device PIs, policymakers and higher education institutions (HEIs). Recommendations for PIs included the need for more systematic planning for impact, from project formation stage onwards, including multiple stakeholder engagement and collaboration throughout the process, to enhance their research project’s impact potential. HEIs must offer more targeted, joined up supports and training for medical device PIs in their efforts to create impactful research, with time allowed to PIs in planning for impact. At the policy level, more standardisation is required in impact definitions and understanding across research policies and structures, to aid impact understanding for all stakeholders in the research process. Similarly, policymakers need to ensure that the metrics they utilise and the outputs they desire are ones that PIs can achieve, and that are firmly linked to eventual impact. A number of future research avenues are also proposed. 2021-12-16

The social work profession in Ireland plays a significant role in the assessment of child sexual abuse referrals. Somewhat unique in an international context, this role encompasses assessment of disclosures by current children who have experienced abuse but also disclosures by adults who have experienced abuse in their childhood. This latter role has remained undefined, un-legislated and under-resourced since its recognition in child protection guidelines in 1999. Anecdotally, the result of such inattention has had devastating effects on those adults who come forward to disclose. This research seeks to explore such concerns by examining how adults tell and addressing the central research question of ‘what is it like for an adult to disclose to child protection services in Ireland?’ This research presents individual voice and lived-experience of adults who have experienced childhood sexual abuse. It utilises a Biographical Narrative Interviewing Methodology (BNIM) and is situated in the wider fields of social work and disclosure scholarship. The research examines how the voices and experiences of such adults can be utilised to critically inform the process of disclosing to statutory child protection services in the Republic of Ireland. The research addresses the following aims: (1) What are the facilitators and barriers for adults making disclosures of childhood sexual abuse to child protection social work services in Ireland, (2) How does the current disclosure process within the child protection system and its underlying policies take account of the specific needs of adults who have experienced sexual abuse in childhood, and (3) What are the policy recommendations that can inform social work practice in this area? The research draws upon a framework of theories incorporating ecological systems theory, ethics of care, power, social constructionism and life course theory to present disclosure and effects of abuse as tandem, fluid and life-long processes that practitioners need to be informed about in order to best facilitate those adults who wish to come forward. This framework is informed by the vast literature regarding sexual abuse and disclosure and draws upon the work of Alaggia, Collin-Vézina, McElvaney, Finkelhor, and others in an effort to advance the scholarship in this field. This research reinforces the existing literature in the field demonstrating the everyday and lifelong effects of abuse in childhood and how experiences of disclosure, not only follow a similar life trajectory but, can also echo and replicate the effects of the abuse itself. The research adds to the field by presenting this in an Irish context in respect of a very specific social work policy and practice setting. The research also adds to the field by presenting narratives from individual adults which demonstrate the impact of engaging with a system that is currently not taking adequate account of the dynamics and effects of childhood sexual abuse. Policy and practice recommendations are explored. 2020-02-05

This study presents an original contribution to knowledge through investigating the impact and lived experience of economic recession for intellectually disabled young people and their families in Ireland, who use services from the disability sector. This is important because in 2008, Ireland was hit with the greatest period of economic recession since the great depression of the 1930s. As the longevity of the recession played out, research evidences that the nation’s children may have been hardest hit, rendered significantly poorer, and within this, disabled children and their families were a particularly vulnerable socio-economic group, at significantly enhanced risk of poverty. Yet, in the context of a relative wealth of statistical data on the equality impacts of recession, little attention within research has been given to the lived reality, voices and experiences of disabled young people and their families in recessionary Ireland (Flynn, 2011; Flynn, 2017b). In this way, this study interjects into a comprehensively investigated sphere, albeit maintaining exceptionality, by way of focusing on voices and lived experiences. This study used the purest or most classic application of the Biographical Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) from initial interviewing through to completion of the ten stage data analysis process. BNIM draws on the assumption that individuals construct meaning in their lives through narrative. Rather than impose categories for exploration, this method allows themes to be engendered by way of participant’s preference. Self-biographising narrative accounts were elicited through BNIM from a sample of 4 intellectually disabled young people (one constituting a pilot study), 4 of their parent/guardians, and 4 disability social work staff members. Congruent with the conventions of BNIM, a smaller sample of 3 cases were chosen for in-depth analysis. The remaining 8 were analysed through a Framework Method that offered a contextual framework of themes and subthemes. In terms of theoretical and epistemological concerns, the study takes up an Affirmative Non- Tragedy Model that situates itself overall within the broad field of Critical Disability Studies. Among study findings, evidence is presented that lived reality for intellectually disabled young people and their families of the impact of recession is a complex and individualistic amalgam of cultural, material and psycho-social factors. These factors, rather than simply co-existing within a static matrix; incited, aggravated and alleviated one another. This interactive process was complex and temporal, but to an extent was predictable. The combined existential experience (or lived reality) of these factors was subjectively felt to be misunderstood by those in positions of power, leading families to seek comfort in the expertise of one another. Findings were numerous, for instance, insufficient cohesion of view points between families, and those perceived to be in power, may be alleviated by better data and a partnership approach that is meaningfully perceptible on the ground level. Furthermore, austerity appeared in reality to galvanise some backward regression in disability service delivery towards more outdated and inappropriate models. Overall, it is hoped that findings from this study can be put to practical usage for disabled young people, their families, and their allies, through both the increment of academic knowledge, and their application as a technology of advocacy. Furthermore, recommendations made by this study outline the specific contribution to knowledge and future practice made by this study, for instance, related to the development of the existing partnership approach to practice, or the generation of more qualitative data.