Context vital in homes cases

THE EDITOR: Child care institutions operate under specific authority arrangements including statute; follow closely with identified, long-standing and known practices; handle their matters according to situational contexts, very often with the involvement of the magistracy; and already understand how to individualise the attention needed and that it should be done.

Children can get into trouble they neither can cope with nor can comprehend properly. Which is to say, there are bound to be upsets. And in addition, children's homes operate differently according to their background and purposes.

So it is not possible to review any case without context, re: foster care, orphanage, delinquency, terms of entrustment, policies, case detail, etc. Each setting has its own challenges.

In the absolute majority of cases the errant child was errant. While it is true that the child may be hurting in some way needing sympathy, other forces are at play and it is not possible for anyone to make everything disappear and just appease the child.

Drawing quarrels into the open over anonymous complainant and minority reports concerning a children's home is never how assessment is done. In the first place with children, privacy is paramount and the home is constrained not to answer.

It also offends the rules of justice; worse if it is that the upset is from one-sided and/or isolated cases, or if the report is long-dated, somewhat unsubstantiated, gratuitously made public. If, however, there is some illegality, there is a right way for that to be dealt with – but it is not showing at present.

E GALY

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