Report backs CLM-run child-law centre

Community Law & Mediation (CLM) is working towards setting up a dedicated centre for children’s law after a report it commissioned backed the establishment of such a specialised unit.

Meeting the Legal Needs of Children and Young People in Ireland and Enhancing Access to Justice – A Children’s Rights Analysis, funded by the RTÉ Toy Show Appeal in partnership with Community Foundation Ireland, was written by lawyer and children’s rights expert Róisín Webb.

While the report acknowledges progress in implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child at national policy level, it finds that children lack effective remedies to challenge breaches of their rights in areas such as care, education, housing, disability, and mental-health services.

The report finds that these difficulties are compounded by:

• Limited awareness of rights among children themselves,
• Inadequate legal support for organisations working directly with children,
• Lack of awareness of children’s rights frameworks among duty bearers,
• Gaps in professional knowledge among lawyers in how to support children whose rights are violated, and
• Challenges in pursuing strategic litigation work that could deliver systemic change.

‘Significant gap’

It argues that there is a need for a specialist legal service that will champion access to justice for children and young people.

The report argues that such a specialised service could play “a central role” in campaigning for a child-friendly justice system, pursuing “practical and procedural mechanisms” to give effect to children’s rights within legal processes and systems.

“While outreach work is well established within independent law centres in Ireland as a key component of providing early legal advice, there is a significant gap when it comes to children,” the report states.

“The need for structured and specialised legal supports for existing services providing advocacy to young people is evident,” it adds.

Funding

The report calls for State funding to establish the proposed legal service, saying that this would be “a significant step” towards ensuring access to justice for children.

The report notes that a previous Law Centre for Children and Young People (LCCYP), set up in 2013, was eventually wound down due to funding issues.

It adds that situating the new service within an existing independent law centre such as CLM “would avoid previous difficulties of establishing a children’s law centre as an independent legal entity”.

It warns, however, that a specialised service would face tensions between providing services directly to children and being strategic in enhancing children’s rights and tackling systemic issues more broadly, adding that this would require “a strategic use of resources”.

It also calls on the State to ensure that commitments in relation to children’s rights in the National Policy Framework Young Ireland and within the Child Poverty Unit of the Department of the Taoiseach include an access-to-justice component.

“What emerges clearly from the research is the recurring theme of moving rights from rhetoric to reality,” said Webb.

CLM chief executive Aoife Kelly-Desmond said that her organisation was aiming to scale up its existing children’s law services to become “a centre for excellence” in relation to child-friendly justice and legal advocacy for children, “with a particular focus on children impacted by disadvantage and inequality”.

‘Theoretical rights’

Speaking at the report’s launch, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC said that there was a ‘realisation gap’ between children’s theoretical rights on paper, and those that they could effectively access in practice.

Aoife Nolan (Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre) said that the report made a “clear and effective” case for a speclialised law centre for children, but warned that it should not just be an “add-on” service.

Prof Nolan said that such a centre could play a role in bringing national issues to international attention but could also help the State by preventing issues from getting to a point where they required international intervention.

Litigation

A panel discussion on the proposal focused on how and when any specialist children’s centre should become involved in litigation, with Tanya Ward (chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance) saying that legal action could “move things along”, citing the example of the right of every child to a school place.

Conor O'Mahony (Professor of Constitutional Law and Child Law at University College Cork) warned, however, that while litigation was sometimes the only option, it did not always fix everything.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC told the event that, sometimes, individual cases brought on the same issue were settled, but the systemic problem that caused them remained, adding that any new centre should “think creatively” about non-litigation ways of securing action on an issue.

Time-sensitive cases

CLM solicitor Ruth Barry said that the Irish justice system did not respect children as individual rights holders – a gap that particularly affected children such those in the care system, or those whose families were in crisis or breakdown.

The panellists also pointed out that there was a time sensitivity to cases linked to children’s rights, as the rights may have expired by the time the case came through.

Prof O’Mahony also warned that any specialised child-law centre had to be realistic, and that “pressing, day-to-day” issues would constantly be landing on its desk. It would face “difficult, conflicting decisions”, he added.