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RTÉ Investigates reveals leaked HSE Internal Report into serious failings in care services for the intellectually disabled

*** STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 10.15PM TONIGHT – THURSDAY 14 JULY 2016***

 

RTÉ Investigates reveals leaked HSE Internal Report into

serious failings in care services for the intellectually disabled

 

 

Tonight on RTÉ Prime Time, reporter Aoife Hegarty and producer David Doran reveal details which shows how some of the failures identified in the ‘Grace’ case did not happen in isolation

 

 

–  Over 1,000 case files reviewed in one region

 

For almost 200 adults with intellectual disabilities under HSE care, case files did not exist

 

 In other cases files were not updated in over 25 years 

 

–  One residential care client not visited in 16 years by health board or HSE, 

despite the placement costing the state “€88,000” annually

 

– One vulnerable woman was regularly returned, unsupervised, to her family home, despite it being known that the woman was sexually abused in childhood by a family member

 

 HSE response acknowledges 47 priority cases highlighted for follow up

 

*** Please credit RTÉ Investigates**

Watch RTÉ Prime Time tonight, 9.35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ News Now

 

An unpublished internal HSE report leaked to RTÉ Investigates suggests that some of the failures identified in the ‘Grace’ case did not happen in isolation.

Last year RTÉ Investigates revealed how a young woman with profound intellectual disabilities, now known by the pseudonym ‘Grace’, was left in a care setting in Waterford for almost 20 years despite a succession of sexual abuse allegations.

 

When failures in the ‘Grace’ case came to light, two case reviews were commissioned by the HSE, one in 2012 and a second in 2015, but both reviews remain unpublished. The Government then announced earlier this year that the entire matter would be subject to a statutory Commission of Investigation.

 

The internal HSE report seen by RTÉ Investigates catalogues a series of similar concerns, showing how in one region of the country, hundreds of adults with intellectual disabilities were repeatedly failed by the State’s care services. In many cases the HSE had never even had a file on the clients in question and in some cases the files that did exist were little more than a single page.

 

The report, which dates from 2013, was written by a senior social worker and examined 1080 files spanning a 30 year period.

 

The report describes a system in “disarray”. It identifies a number of “key concerns”, including that :

  • The Health Service Executive has little or no knowledge about most of the clients in the adult intellectual disability services that it funds.
  • The social work service for adults with intellectual disabilities has been and still is very inadequately resourced.
  • Intellectually disabled adults have been left at serious risk of abuse including sexual abuse because concerns have not been properly identified and acted upon by the health board or HSE.

The report reveals that there were almost 200 adults with intellectual disabilities for whom case files did not exist.

 

Other files had not been updated in over 25 years and consisted of nothing more than a single sheet of paper with the author referring to some as a “complete mystery”.

 

In one particular case a lack of information and communication meant that a vulnerable woman was being regularly returned, unsupervised, to her family home, despite it being known that the woman was sexually abused in childhood by a family member. The home visits were to be supervised but the HSE worker who accompanied the woman had no knowledge of the abuse or of the need to supervise the visits.

 

In another case a client had been placed with a service some 17 years earlier and hadn’t been visited by the health board or HSE in the intervening years. The client’s files contained “very little information” despite the placement costing “€88,000” annually.

 

And another case referred to a man with Down Syndrome who spent his whole life in residential care, yet when the report’s author and this colleague visited him, they were “the first official people” to have done so in 16 years.

 

In a statement to RTÉ Investigates, the HSE said that of the 1080 disability files reviewed “47 priority cases” were highlighted for follow up. It says the care and safety needs of all the cases highlighted are being met – there are “no current safeguarding issues”. And a range of service improvements have been put in place to “safeguard vulnerable adults from neglect or abuse”.

 

 

Watch the RTÉ Investigates report “Lost in Care” tonight on Prime Time, 9.35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ News Now.

 

 

The original RTÉ Investigates report on the “Grace” case from April 2015 is available to watch back here: http://www.rte.ie/news/investigations-unit/2016/0201/764546-rte-investigations-unit-duty-of-care/

www.rte.ie

Original broadcast 16 April 2015 – A special RTÉ Investigations Unit report on the failings of a former health board to remove an intellectually disabled person from …

 

– Ends –

 

*** STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 10.15PM TONIGHT – THUR 14 JULY 2016***

 

Date: Thursday 14th July 2016

 

Contact: Laura Fitzgerald, Communications Manager, RTÉ News & Current Affairs, Ph:01-2083996087 2923931Laura.Fitzgerald@rte.ie