AN INTERNATIONAL expert on child protection has urged Ireland to proceed with introducing mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect as a progressive and important means of ensuring the safety and welfare of children.
Prof Kirsten Sandberg, a Norwegian who serves on the UN Committee on the Rights of Children, said she believed the benefits of introducing mandatory reporting far outweighed any concerns people might have over such a move.
It was mandatory in Norway for all public authority staff and some in the private sector such as teachers in private schools or those in private agencies dealing with children to report suspicions of abuse or neglect, she noted.
“We had this debate about mandatory reporting at the end of the 1980s in Norway and quite a few doctors thought it was a bad idea because it would breach the confidence that patients need to have in their doctors, but specialists in child psychiatry wanted it."
“There was some initial opposition, but I think now most people recognise that it is important that any abuse or neglect of children is reported and it’s become accepted – I think the mandatory system has worked well in Norway,” she said.
There was some concern in Ireland that the introduction of mandatory reporting would impact on family rights, but it was important that constitutional protections for the family did not override protection of children, she added.
“I would advocate the introduction of a mandatory reporting system here; as far as I understand, it is the right to family life which is the main counter-argument – but at the outset, the family should have its right to family life and not be interfered with. But I cannot see why a right to family life should be a right to neglect or abuse a child – I cannot see that argument, and that’s why I think it’s so important for both individual children and for the society that those cases are being brought to the attention of the authorities.”
Prof Sandberg said mandatory reporting in Norway applies only to cases of serious abuse or neglect – a threshold that is too high in her view, as it does not allow for reporting of less obvious psychological cases.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the Child Law Clinic and the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century at UCC, she said she was surprised by Ireland’s delay in introducing a constitutional provision guaranteeing the rights of children.