Cork accounts for over half of all care order reviews, report finds
Cork accounted for more than half of all the reviews of Care Orders made in 2014, a new report has found.
The Child Care Law Reporting Project revealed that agencies in different regions differ significantly in the number of children they seek to place in care.
Cork accounts for over half of all care order reviews — 475 out of 806.
The Irish Examiner reported that director of the project, Dr Carol Coulter, said she thought this was “actually a good thing”.
“It indicates that there is very substantial oversight of how children in care are getting on in Cork and that is to be welcomed,” she said.
Just under 10,000 applications for children to be taken into care were dealt with by courts around the country last year.
The latest figures from the Courts Service show that District Courts dealt with a total of 9,864 applications under the Child Care Act last year, mainly relating to taking children into care.
This figure however does not reflect the number of children involved, as many were renewals or reviews of existing orders, and several orders could relate to one child.
The applications were made by Tusla and the Child and Family Agency - and the latest report highlights significant regional variations.
Letterkenny in Co Donegal and Mallow in Co Cork, towns of about the same size, had 368 and 231 applications respectively last year, for children to be taken into care.
Meanwhile, other towns have reported consistently low numbers of child protection applications - only 16 applications were made in Carlow and 61 in Galway in 2014.
