Martin Daly warns fragmented reporting blocks adult safeguarding

I suppose just to continue on with that, because that's a really worthwhile thing to explore, is the, I think you point out, the vulnerability of people who are making, because we know there are people who are in quite powerful positions, have made disclosures and whistleblowing, and have found that careers have been stunted, stalled, or destroyed. And so you can imagine if someone is a healthcare worker on low wages, with tenuous employment, how difficult a step that is for them. And I suppose that brings me to my point, and I suppose you've all alluded to it in previous contributions, that if you have reporting that is, the system is fragmented and complex, that in itself is a barrier to making a report, unless you have got one direct funnel of support, even in a situation where we can do that, say, with Tuesday in terms of child abuse, it's still difficult. And it's even difficult for professionals who feel it might be more empowered than other people. But if you have a fragmented, complex system, as we have here, and you pointed that out, I think that's something that needs to be addressed in this framework really very much so. The other thing is, and I am taken with, and I asked the question a few times, I think, too, that I'm beginning to see that the framework that was published yesterday, whilst on the health and social model part of it, it's fine, but it's not comprehensive enough when we look at what the Law Commission recommendations were from 2024. And I do think we probably have a bit of work to do with this committee on that aspect of it. Just getting back to the reporting, is that your experience as well, is it, that this fragmented sort of complex reporting is a barrier to actual... People give up, you know, something happens on a given day, you say, and then it happens again a couple of times, and then you try and engage, and you're getting nowhere. And, you know, these are busy people who are, you know, under pressure themselves, and then suddenly it slides into the background and it moves on. And you talked about under-reporting. Can I comment on how reporting within, because there is reporting ongoing within health and social care, my experiences of people who see an adult safeguarded concern in the community, and they come to us thinking that we're the organisation that actually provides the service and can help. What we do is we look at the query or the concern, and we see often that there are multiple dimensions to it, right? So there might be something happening in the home, there might be something happening in relation to a social welfare payment that is belonging to the adult and may not be being spent on the adult. There might be issues relating to care, medications management, medications mismanagement, et cetera. There might be issues relating to the property of the person, their home, their right to ownership of their home. There might be issues to do with people having been left money in a will, for example, and never getting access to it. So that's a really multi-dimensional and complex concern. So obviously we would signpost always to the HSE and to the adult safeguarding and protection teams regionally, absolutely. But there would be other dimensions to that concern. And what we would see as being absolutely essential is that there is a body that can take all of that on and work in close collaboration with the other agencies. Because there may be, obviously, there may be concerns for Garnet-Chicona, for the Department of Social Protection, for the financial institution, obviously for the person at the centre of all this who's really concerned and confused. So streamlining that and giving certainty as to what the process is once the referral is made, what happens next? Like, I firmly believe that should be in the public domain. We should know because the person is often really concerned that the issues will escalate or that it will result in a lack of care for them or that somebody won't be there to help them, you know, with day-to-day living. So that absolutely needs to be streamlined. And I would say that definitely inhibits reporting. I would add to that as well and agree. And also we need to look at, you know, from the person's perspective, as you've rightly said, that experience of dealing with fragmented systems and supports is exhausting and also people fall through the cracks as a direct result of that. So what we do know is for adults there is a National Advocacy Service. It is chronically underfunded and now has a long waiting list. So that needs proper resourcing so that the person who has a concern or who might be experiencing abuse has somebody to walk alongside them to navigate the complexities of that system and support them in all of those elements. And what we've also done, just last year, we published a piece of research around the need for a children's advocacy service as well. Because, again, what children and families are telling us is that, you know, their child has been labelled as complex but it's actually the systems they're navigating which are incredibly complex. And having an advocate or somebody in your corner to walk alongside you can support that family to bring down, you know, looking at the hierarchy of needs, you know, support them to be resilient, support them to navigate all of those complexities and ultimately get a good outcome for children. Some of the abuse is very nuanced as well, especially around elderly people. You know, people, you know, sometimes, and it is the majority of cases where you have carers who are exemplars in the community, and they appear to be exemplars, but are eating out of the, literally eating out of that elderly person's pocket. Okay, we move on to the last.