Irish child protection expert Shane Dunphy has reported in the Irish Independent that a homeless couple have lost their High Court bid to have their prematurely born baby returned to them. The HSE had placed an interim care order on the child while the infant was receiving necessary medical treatment in hospital. During this time, the parents had made arrangements to move in with one of the child’s grandparents until they could find suitable independent accommodation of their own. Advocates for the homeless maintain that the couple have done everything possible to demonstrate their willingness to care for their baby in a responsible nurturing manner.
The couple brought a habeas corpus bid looking to have the child returned to their custody. Mr Justice Michael Peart rejected the bid, stating that the couple should have sought a judicial review challenge of the interim care order. He dismissed the action, stating that the child required specialist care, which he believed the child was unlikely to receive without State intervention.
Child protection expert Shane Dunphy believes the homeless couple may have fallen foul of the arcane workings of the social services and the overly complicated jargon attached to those services: “The fact is, there is a language, a code that is used, which the average lay person can find frustrating and frightening: Section 12, Guardian ad litem [sic], family welfare conferences . . . it can sound like a foreign language . . . [I]f you cannot navigate the maze of orders and contradictory jargon, you can find yourself in dire trouble”.
Dunphy offers an alternative approach to the Court’s decision, whereby the baby would remain in the care of his parents, but that the family would be legally obligated to open their home to a social worker for a pre-determined number of hours every week. This supervision order could be reviewed after 12 months, or simply shut down and replaced with a more aggressive order if social services thought it necessary.