A HIQA inspection of Child Protection and Welfare services in Louth and Meath has found the service provided was unsafe because of delays in allocating social workers to assess children's needs and poor quality information systems.
The watchdog's review also found that waiting lists across the service were significant and not always well managed.
Approximately 88,000 children are living in the Louth-Meath area.
According to HIQA, the counties' Child Protection and Welfare services, run by TUSLA, received over 3,500 referrals last year but did not know how many of these referrals required initial assessments.
106 children were on the Child Protection Notification System at the time of inspection last January.
Inspectors found that of the 27 standards assessed, the service met one, required improvement in 18 and had to address significant risks in eight.
One week into the inspection, HIQA issued an immediate action plan to the Area Manager ordering urgent action to improve "ineffective and unsafe information systems" and to address the "inconsistent allocation of social workers to children placed on the child protection and notification system".
The watchdog also mandated urgent improvements in "inadequate and unsafe systems for review, monitoring and management of waiting lists across the service".
The report says staff in the service valued the safety of children and endeavoured to keep children safe and meet their needs, but that this was not always possible.
It says that aspects of the service were unsafe and, although children's cases were prioritised for a social work intervention, this did not always ensure that children at greatest risk and with high levels of need received a timely service.
The capacity of the service to meet the needs of all children was found to be compromised by delays in allocating social workers to assess children's needs and by poor quality information systems.
The inspection found waiting lists across the service were significant and were not always managed well.
The inspection also found that some complaints were not dealt with appropriately.
The report acknowledged the impact of limited resources on the service but said managers did not always demonstrate the level of leadership required to deliver the service effectively.
The report concludes that the service was experiencing increasing demands from ever-present waiting lists and high rates of referrals and re-referrals, which limited its effectiveness.
