Amid blanket coverage of high-profile child sex abuse investigations in the wake of revelations involving Jimmy Savile and other celebrities, one child abuse inquiry has remained below the public's radar. But the Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry is slowly emerging from relative obscurity.

The inquiry is separate from a recent major police investigation in the country that has led to the arrest of more than 30 people for sexual exploitation of children and young people who have gone missing from the care system over the past 18 months.

Formally established by law in January this year, the historical inquiry is tasked with examining if there were "systemic failings" by state and church in children's homes between 1922 and 1995 – a period spanning more than 70 years. Earlier this month, the inquiry held its third public hearing in Belfast, where its chairman, the former high court judge Sir Anthony Hart, named, for the first time, some of the institutions under investigation, including former children's homes run by the Catholic church.

Hart also confirmed that the final deadline for victims wishing to apply to give evidence would be the end of November, and he made fresh calls for people now living outside Northern Ireland who had been abused as children in the country to come forward. Earlier this month, 363 people had already made formal applications to speak to the inquiry; some were in their 80s. Hart said that more than 100 were living in mainland Britain, the US and Australia.

Humiliation

Margaret McGuckin was one of the first victims to submit an application to give evidence to the inquiry, which is looking at all types of abuse: physical and emotional as well as sexual.

In 1968, aged 11, McGuckin left Nazareth House, a children's home in Belfast run by the Nazareth Sisters. After eight years in the home, she did her best to get on with her life, but like many survivors, she told no one for decades what had happened to her there. "You didn't want to think about it because the memories were just too much," she says. "We were child slaves from a very young age." Young children were expected to carry out gruelling domestic chores and were wantonly punished, she says. "We were getting practically drowned in baths, beaten and starved. It was pure and sheer neglect: coldness, cruelty and humiliation. Can you imagine the damaged goods coming out of that? And I was certainly damaged goods. I was made to feel worthless, that I was a bad person." She was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

McGuckin, now 56, became a campaigner for survivors of abuse a few years ago, after seeing someone she had been in Nazareth House with talking on television about the abuse she had experienced. "The scales came off my eyes. I couldn't ignore this any more and I immediately got in touch with her."

It was at a time when people across Ireland were beginning to speak out, thanks in large part to the Ryan commission into the abuse of thousands of children in more than 250 mainly church-run institutions in the south of Ireland. It published its damning report in May 2009, not long after widespread media coverage of the Magdalene Laundries scandals, involving the incarceration and abuse in convents of women and girls.

McGuckin and others are grateful for the inquiry, and are keen to ensure that it hears from as many survivors as possible, that awareness of what happened is raised and that people and institutions are held accountable. But as the next stage of the hearings approaches – where evidence will be given in public – concerns are being raised about the scope of the inquiry and the processes for supporting survivors.

Alison Diver, 44, was placed in care in numerous institutions during the 1980s. She says she experienced various types of abuse and that the impact on her life was "devastating" – she has had severe depression and has attempted suicide. The "extremely stressful" process of dredging up memories in private, informal interviews with the inquiry team might have been made easier, she suggests, if a dedicated mental health professional specialising in trauma had been present. She says she "needed more help" during and after giving evidence than the witness support officers were able to give.

The Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, which announced the inquiry, has recently commissioned the setting up of a helpline for victims. But Diver and McGuckin claim that more support is needed for victims when they first encounter the inquiry.

"There are no counsellors on hand," says McGuckin. "We feel like we are going there and we are being retraumatised. I'd like to see better support."

Hart said that, although inquiry members are very aware of the emotional distress that coming to see them can generate for applicants, "unfortunately, this is unavoidable by the very nature of the task". He added: "The role of the inquiry is not to provide expert counselling or psychiatric care. That is for the health and social care services and specialist organisations."

Another survivor, Jim McCleave, 47, believes that, in addition to support issues, the scope of the inquiry should have been wider. For example, it isn't investigating clerical abuse and has no power to determine the civil or criminal liability of individuals. McCleave, who was raped at 13 by a youth worker, went "off the rails" as a result, and ended up, aged 15, in St Patrick's Training Centre in Belfast on remand, only to be sexually abused by a monk in whose care he was placed.

He says he worries that "it's all just words … a paper exercise", and that individual perpetrators won't be brought to justice. He says he would like to see a full-scale police investigation. "The cats and dogs in the street know there was institutional abuse. There's no point in having an inquiry to tell us what we already know," he says.

But the inquiry is clear that it is not within its purview to instigate prosecutions as a result of any allegations bought to its attention. It can, however, report "matters of a criminal nature" to the police, who could then refer cases to the public prosecution service.

The final issue that victims want clarity on is compensation. The inquiry's terms of reference state that compensation "is a matter that the executive will discuss and agree following receipt of the inquiry and investigation report". The final report is expected in January 2016. But for McGuckin, who is now a spokeswoman for the charity Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse, and whose brother was also abused in a separate home for boys, compensation is a crucial part of redress.

"It's time to pay up and to compensate victims so they can live the rest of their lives with no worry of deprivation," she says. "We want justice. It's been a long time coming."