ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS OF SOCIAL SERVICES
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak to you today and I thank the President of your Association, David Behan and the Chair of the Northern Ireland Branch, Dominic Burke for the very kind invitation to be part of this important gathering with its focus on “Searching for excellence in Children’s Services.”
This is one search that can never be called off, for you know better than most from your everyday work that where the web of care is patchy children fall through and with devastating consequences. The surest guarantee of children’s well-being is to have a fluent, integrated and effective range of services, where all the dots are joined up, all day, every day. Your presence here today is a tribute to your dedication and commitment to our children’s future. It is also deeply reassuring to the public that representatives of so many different but relevant constituencies each with its own reservoir of wisdom, insight and experience, are prepared to share with each other and to learn from one another.
There is a happy childhood that we would wish for all children and there is a damaging childhood that breaks our hearts. Your work takes you directly into the places where hearts get broken or are in danger of it and worse. It takes you to the people whose lives are problematic without special support and assistance. The wide range of services in which you are involved have grown increasingly sophisticated and broader in scope, moving beyond simple intervention to prevention.
There are few things more pitiful than a child whose future is already being shut down by forces he or she is too young to comprehend or to transcend. Their reliance on us is awesome. We know, because experience has taught us that life is a handicapped race and even as we meet those tragic children and even as they are telling us innocently of their dreams for the future we know the obstacles are mounting and their best destinies are in danger of being crushed. We also know that time is of the essence. There is a saying “What is learnt in childhood is engraved in stone.” The full impact of its meaning only came home to me when a mistake was made on my grandfather’s granite headstone- a small but very visible mistake in the date. I asked if it could be amended and was told that the only answer was to replace the headstone. We don’t get such options with children. We get one go around. Engrave well and the diamond sparkles. Engrave badly and the flaw endures.
Your work is a critical part of the engraving process and it is probably the most difficult. You are called to make serious decisions, finely tuned judgments, to weigh information that may be highly ambiguous, to intervene in relationships cemented by familial bonds which endure beyond breakdown, to hear in the most inarticulate of silences, the warning sounds that others cannot hear. You are called on to offer support and guidance to those who may be unaware of their need for it or who may be bitterly resentful of your power in their lives. And over your shoulder sits the public, watching, judging, holding you accountable. Your many successes are known mostly to yourselves. Your rare failures make front page news and provoke a root and branch critique of all that you do and the way that you do it. Between those successes and the lessons that are learnt from the failures you help build up civic society. You invest in the strengthening of our social fabric in those places where it is frayed and in danger of unravelling. Without your work a lot more children would suffer needlessly, a lot more adults would lead skewed and wasted lives, a lot more misery would be inflicted on family, on street, on community, on country.
We need you work and in particular we need your vision for services which keep getting better. Among the things which are getting better is Northern Ireland itself. The peace process is already giving children a better future and there is a lot to look forward to for all the ups and downs of the politics of peace. We will probably never know the full extent of the human suffering caused by these years of violence. Many have suffered dreadfully, among them many who have suffered in silence. Your work has brought you close to that suffering and the adverse downstream effects will be around for a long time even with the very best efforts of your services among a litany of others. But thankfully the context is changing and the people of Northern Ireland are themselves the source of that change, that determination that the future will not be a repetition of the past but will instead be a future for everyone to be proud of and part of.
The Good Friday Agreement which gives shape to the public will for peace and partnership was concluded thanks to leadership, generosity and communication on all sides. People who had never shared views or listened patiently to the perspectives of others found scope for a fresh imagination when they did so, for it was that sharing process which truly revealed the extent of the problems and the extent of the will for peace. A similar fresh imagination is your hope for this conference where many disciplines and sectors will each put on the table their unique piece of the jigsaw puzzle from which you will create the picture of a future of excellence in children’s services. The Victoria Climbie enquiry report which I know will be on your agenda makes the point loud and clear that coherent communication is an imperative across all the interlocking constituencies involved in a child’s life. The resource and procedural implications of that imperative are among the things which no doubt will exercise you greatly but the goal is excellence and nothing less will do.
The public relies heavily on your leadership and courage in promoting the changes in social service provision which best secure an environment where the rights of the child are paramount and readily vindicated. The Irish Government’s ten year National Children’s Strategy puts it well when it aspires to a society “where children are respected as young citizens with a valued contribution to make and a voice of their own; where all children are cherished and supported by family and the wider society; where they enjoy a fulfilling childhood and realise their potential.” That society is the destination of your search for excellence. I wish you well as you use this conference to sketch the road-map that will take us all to a better future for vulnerable children.
You deal with things many others would run a mile from and it is at times, I am sure, draining and distressing work. I hope that here at this conference you may be re-energized in your important vocation and that there will still be a bit of time to see some of the beautiful Northern Ireland countryside.
My renewed thanks to the Association of Directors of Social Services for inviting me to come and address you here today. I hope that the conference is a success and I wish you well in your deliberations.