Professor Robbie Gilligan discusses a “policy blind spot” in Ireland resulting from a lack of data collection on the education of children in the care system, including the percentage of those children who go on to university. Ireland recently launched a new National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015-2019 to improve access to education for disadvantaged groups, but the new plan is silent on the educational needs for children in care. 

This article from the Irish Times explains that the Council of Europe has ruled that the lack of a clear ban on corporal punishment in Ireland is a violation of children’s rights and the European Social Charter.

This article from the Irish Times describes the assessment and training process for prospective foster carers in Ireland, a process which the author says is necessarily rigorous and intrusive in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children in foster care.

Work is important for promoting social inclusion, especially for marginalised or economically vulnerable populations. There is also evidence that work is associated with stability and social integration for young people who have left care.

This article examines adoption from three different perspectives - that of an adoptive mother, that of a mother whose child was adopted by another family, and that of an adoptee - through the personal adoption stories of three women in Ireland.

This article from RTE News discusses the new Children and Family Relationship Bill to be enacted in Ireland.

A high-profile inquiry into the treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies by 14 State-linked religious institutions in Ireland from 1922-1998 was launched on 9 January, 2015. However, tens of thousands of people affected by this crisis may be excluded from the inquiry, says the article.

 Using the accumulated wisdom of a select group of accomplished managers, academics and policy makers in social work and social care, this paper retrospectively reviews the evolution of Family Support within the Irish context and distils the core characteristics of Family Support practice and service delivery. 

This study involved the use of qualitative methods as part of a larger process evaluation to explore the longer-term experiences of parents who participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Incredible Years Parenting Programme (IYPP) in disadvantaged settings in Ireland.

In this documentary, Martin Sixsmith undertakes an investigative journey to determine the role of the Irish Catholic Church in the adoption “trade” that led thousands of children of unwed parents to be separated from their mothers and adopted abroad.