childcare-50years

5
Having commenced with a small group of officers with few having
any formal qualifications, the probation service has developed
substantially in the past 50 years to cope with the new legislative
requirements. The Probation Board (Northern Ireland) Order 1982
facilitated the creation of a new arms length management structure,
which has enabled the service to be run by a community based Board
of Management. The Probation Board today has a staff complement
of around 300, of whom, approximately, 200 work directly with
offenders or are service managers. All probation officers are qualified
social workers. The probation service now operates as a professional
service, which has been given a clearer function to provide
programmes for the supervision and assistance of offenders and to
help them prevent re-offending. It also seeks to protect the public
from harm.
A major report in 1979 by the Children and Young Persons Review
Group, chaired by the late Sir Harold Black, which had been
established to review legislation and services relating to the care and
treatment of children and young persons under the Children and
Young Persons Act (Northern Ireland) 1968 and to consider, in
particular, the future administration of the probation service made
significant proposals for change in the arrangements for
management of juvenile offenders. Many of these have been
implemented over the past 20 years. One of its recommendations,
that training schools should be closed and replaced with a single
custodial establishment for young offenders, was not implemented at
the time. The training schools at Rathgael, St Patrick's, St Joseph's
and Whiteabbey remained in existence although the Rathgael and
Whiteabbey Schools were combined into one school for both girls
and boys on the Rathgael site. Lisnevin Training School was
established at Millisle, after a short period at Newtownards.
Custodial sentences, in the form of training school orders, have been
available to the juvenile courts since 1968 for children who commit
more serious offences or who are persistent in their offending. They
could also be made, until the implementation of the Children (NI)
Order 1995, for children who were found by the courts to be in need
of care, protection and control or children who persistently failed to
attend school. This led to substantial numbers of training school
50 YEARS OF CHILD CARE IN NORTHERN IRELAND
111