A 13-year-old boy, currently in special care, was carried in the boot of a car on the M50 last month, the High Court has heard.
The boy, who told careworkers he “used to rob cars” but had not “robbed one in two months”, was found with heroin “on his person” giving rise to worries that he was “being exploited for criminal purposes,” Judge John Jordan was told.
The judge was on Tuesday hearing the special care list, where applications for orders are heard and updates are provided on children in the system or awaiting a place in it. Special care is the most secure form of care, where children aged 11 to 17 may be detained by the High Court when their behaviour poses a threat to their safety/lives or those of others.
Just 15 of the 26 special care beds are open, however, due to Tusla’s severe challenges in recruiting and retaining staff.
In an update on the boy’s case, barrister Sarah McKechnie, for Tusla, said: “A disclosure was made that he had been in the boot of car on the M50 [in August]. That is currently being followed up on.”
The child had, the judge said, “led a chaotic life”, particularly in more recent years.
Problems finding step-down placements for children deemed ready, or to be soon ready, to leave special care was a central issue in five of the 12 cases before the court, causing huge upset to the young people.
The court heard that a teenage girl who is “likely being exploited and vulnerable to significant harm” has been missing for almost three weeks, having absconded on a day out.
She had gone missing twice this year and once turned up at a Garda station with a head injury having witnessed a “very serious crime”.
McKechnie told the court “social workers are walking the streets to try and find her”. The girl had been in contact and was “insistent” she would not return “until a step down placement is identified”.
Gardaí said the risk to the girl was not high enough to warrant them “pinging” her phone to locate her, said McKechnie.
Jordan said it was “incumbent” on the “authorities” to do everything possible to find the girl. “The issue of tracking or pinging [her phone] needs to be revisited as a matter of urgency.”
The court heard a boy had to be taken to hospital by ambulance from special care after he took ketamine he had obtained while on a visit home.
“It is concerning that he managed to access and use ketamine,” said the judge. “One wonders how that can happen if proper supervision and monitoring is in place.”
An order was granted to detain a preteen boy, engaged in significant violence, threats with weapons and property damage, in special care. He has said he wants to die and has walked into oncoming traffic.
The court heard he was adopted from an institution in another jurisdiction some years ago, having spent his first months with his birth-mother.
He was in voluntary interim care and his adoptive parents were “heartbroken”, McKechnie said as she sought the order. “They could not care for him in light of very dysregulated behaviour.”
No special care bed is available to him and the judge said he wanted the order complied with “immediately”, but expected the boy may be “languishing” on the no-beds list at the next sitting in October.