Health and social services minister Angela Smith announced that the executive would spend an extra £220m on health, social services and public safety for 2004-05. Of that, she pledged a proportion to be put towards safeguarding and protecting vulnerable children and developing adoption services to cope with an expected increase in the number of children requiring adoption.
The department of health and social services could not give any more details of the funding, but said the allocation of the money would now be discussed by the department and its four boards, which are in turn responsible for 19 health and personal social services trusts.
There had been a significant increase in the number of children adopted as a result of early planning for children in the care system to ensure they were placed with suitable families as soon as possible, it added.
Northern Ireland has a higher number of children on the Child Protection Register than other parts of the UK, at 30.7 per 10,000, compared with the average of 23.8 in England.
The children's charity Barnardo's said there were a number of issues around vulnerable children to be tackled, including joined-up working practices. "Lots of communications issues keep coming up, and we're a very small place. We shouldn't be making mistakes around a lack of joint working or communication," said a spokeswoman. She added that the high number of children on the Child Protection Register was a cause for concern.
"We need to look at why we have this higher rate, and also how we are actually going to deal with these children that are on the register," she said. "We're anticipating that the department might be trying to speed up the adoption system."
Adoption UK's Northern Ireland support co-ordinator, Sheilah O'Neill, welcomed news of the funding, and said the culture shift away from foster care towards permanent homes would mean an increased demand on resources.
"We need more skilled social workers and more resources in general to implement this - so we're delighted to hear we're getting more money," she said.
But she also warned that while aspects of the system could be revised, the process in some cases was necessarily long. "It is a legal process, which takes time. Certain parts could be moved on, such as the delays between the decision that a child will not return to its birth parents and the court decision to allow the adoption of the child. But the main thing is to have families and children well prepared for the processes," she said.
