NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times
Dan Keenan
The North’s residential care homes were reminiscent of “a bygone age” that had not moved with the times, an inquiry into historical abuse in Co Down has heard.
Senior counsel for the inquiry Christine Smith QC told the second day of public hearings: “The evidence suggests that those homes operated as outdated survivors of a bygone age.”
Reforms aligned with the introduction of the welfare state in Britain after the second World War were not fully implemented, she said.
She illustrated this by referring to one unnamed witness who has given details to the inquiry of her treatment at the hands of residential home workers following bed-wetting incidents. This witness said that, as a child, she had had her nose rubbed in the wet mattress and forced to take a cold baths using Jeyes Fluid, Ms Smith told the inquiry.
The senior counsel had been outlining the historical and legislative background to childcare during the years 1922 to 1995, the years under examination by the inquiry under its terms of reference.
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