Committee of Inquiry into Residential Child Care (1976)

A Committee of Inquiry into Residential Child Care was appointed by the Minister for Community Welfare on 6 April 1976. It was chaired by Beryl Grant OBE who was then the Director of Ngala. The other members were Mr CG Adams, Father B Hickey and Mr LE Smith.

The terms of reference for the committee were:

To examine the role and involvement of the religious organisations providing residential child care facilities (including those which also accept day attendees), the children who are orphans or are disadvantaged by way of broken home situations and/or emotional and behavioural problems:
To receive submissions, inquire into and make recommendations on:
(1) Appropriate areas of responsibility of those organisations in the field of child care;
(2) The scope and involvement of each such organisation;
(3) The standards which should be expected of them and whether additional supervision should be imposed;
(4) The relative impact of day attendance on residential:
(5) The financial Problems with which they are faced;
(6) The funding required for efficient operation;
(7) The extent of Government financial and other assistance which is warranted and the manner in which it should be assessed;
(8) The problems generally of these institutions;
(9) The avenues upon and the - possibilities of increasing the extent of funding from other sources. Hansard, Tuesday 24 August 1976, pp.2024-2025

The Committee completed its report in September 1976.

In its submission to the Senate Inquiry into Institutional Child Care in 2004, the Department for Community Development reported that:

a finding by the 1976 Committee of Inquiry into Residential Child Care that the state should continue to nurture and develop its longstanding relationship with the voluntary sector and seek to influence, in partnership with private sector agencies, how out-of-home care was managed and operated, led to the establishment of the (Ministerial) Consultative Committee on Residential Child Care (CCRCC) in 1977. Submission No.55, Department for Community Development, p.9