Residential child care in northern ireland

Abstract

Abstract In January 1980 an article by Mr Peter McKenna appeared in the Irish Independent under the beading of 'Sex Racket at Children's Home'. The article contained a number of allegations of sexual abuse by staff in a Belfast residential hostel for adolescent boys; Kincora Boy's Hostel. Sadly the allegations were found to be true. A committee of inquiry Was commissioned. In due course the Hughes Committee of Inquiry reported it's findings and issued fifty-six recommendations for change. In the paper which follows the author argues that real determination to professionalise residential child care did not materialise until the post Kincora era and has been painfully slow. The author confronts the traditional negative image of residential child care and challenges colleagues in other parts of the child care system to cast off discriminatory attitudes toward residential child care and by so doing become part of a positive change process. The paper stresses that the leadership of residential child care that ...