Child is placed on waiting list for over 14 months following referral for sexual abuse

A child waiting over 14 months for intervention from Tusla’s Dublin South Central after a referral of sexual abuse was one of several examples of the agency’s poor service found through an inspection.

Between February and April, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) carried a yearly inspection in the regional Tusla area that includes West and South Dublin.

With a “highly diverse population,” an International Protection Accommodation Centre, 14 emergency accommodation centres and hubs supporting homeless families, DSC has been characterised in the report as “an area balancing suburban expansion, urban renewal and persistent socio-economic divides.”

The area displays “high levels of deprivation,” which impacts children living in it, with Ronanstown, Collinstown, part of Ballyfermot and the Southwest Inner City being deemed as “extremely disadvantaged” in the HIQA report.

The child placed on a waiting list for over 14 months following a referral for sexual abuse was prioritised as “medium” by the service and hadn’t received any therapeutic support at the time of the inspection.

Other cases inspected in the service, which also resulted “non-compliant” in all of the five national child protection and welfare standards, showed other examples of children waiting an excessive amount of time before their at-risk situations were addressed.

“A referral from An Garda Síochána (AGS) which indicated that a child may have been contacted by a person of concern known to AGS was prioritised as low and placed on a waiting list for over 12 months,” reads the report.

“Dublin South Central staff did not make contact with Gardaí and their colleagues in the area where the person subject of abuse allegations resided to establish the level of risk.”

In another case where a child had three referrals, two of which were for physical abuse and one of those dated back to 26 months prior to the inspection and was still placed on a waitlist at the time.

The third referral received two months before the inspection “had not been screened to establish the risk of harm to the child,” the report found.

Other children affected by domestic violence had to wait a year before being allocated to a social worker, and the wellbeing of a one-year-old baby who had been referred from the Gardaí hadn’t been established six months later.

Such cases showed poor capacity to carry out assessments of children’s welfare and protection needs in a timely manner, explained the report.

All these were brought to the attention of the Tusla DSC manager by inspectors and the service response indicated that all cases had actions completed to ensure children’s safety.

In relation to their 2024 compliance plan, Tusla made some progress in allocating more social workers and in the recruitment and retention of staff, according to HIQA.

However, at the time of the 2025 inspection “significant concerns remained” about the capacity of the Dublin South Central service to fulfil its obligations.

Tusla acknowledged the recent publication noting that the percentage of unallocated cases reduced from 54 percent in February 2024, to 41 percent at the time of the inspection, and is currently at 34 percent.

The agency also highlighted that when a child or young person is on the waiting list for allocation to social workers, their cases are still reviewed in case there’s a need for a more urgent response.