I do not enjoy watching horror films. I know that they are not real but being frightened is not a pleasurable experience for me and so I choose to avoid it where I can. Facing your fears is an important part of effective safeguarding and it is something that is often ignored. It can […]
Read More →The Learning Circle: Linking Experience to Improvement The ability of individuals and organisations to learn from experience is essential if they are seeking to achieve continuous improvement in their practice. This simple truth is one that many in the field of child safeguarding appear reluctant to accept. When a tragedy occurs, inquiries frequently reveal […]
Read More →Child Protection and Child Safeguarding – More than Semantics Like many other areas of human activity, social work develops its own language. Changes in our thinking and our understanding are reflected in our communications. I recall when I first began my career, the deliberate harming of a child was termed “Non-Accidental Injury”. There was […]
Read More →When visiting India recently, I was struck by a story that appeared in a newspaper which described the outpouring of grief from residents in an apartment block in the city that I was staying in. The priests from a nearby Hindu temple held a gathering in the street to express the community’s condolences at the […]
Read More →The Role of Media and Child Protection: Transforming the Social Problem into a Public Issue May I begin by thanking you for the opportunity of addressing you this morning? It is both a pleasure and a privilege to be here in Bangalore and to have the chance to […]
Read More →At the end of June last year, I stood down from my post as Chief Executive Officer for the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Over the course of the preceding six years most objective observers would agree that great progress had been made in addressing the problem of […]
Read More →It may seem obvious to some that there is a causal relationship between the structure that an organisation adopts to deliver a service and the outcomes achieved by that service. Although that may seem obvious, I have encountered many examples in my professional life where the relationship between structure and outcomes does not appear to […]
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I was never a “Boy Scout”. However, I was always taken by their motto which is, I believe, “Be Prepared”. This always struck me as being eminently sensible advice and particularly so when you were facing some challenging event in life. It is with that thought in mind that I am sharing with you some […]
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The perceived failure to protect vulnerable children within the Irish Catholic Church has been very damaging to the institution’s reputation and standing in society. It is even more disturbing to note that it is not a new phenomenon but one that has persisted for many years. There have been numerous crises and some public inquiries […]
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