Professor Michelle Norris:

At the risk of making myself unpopular among my social work colleagues, I do not think there is an issue with entry level salaries in social work which are comparable to those in other social and educational professions and compare well to entry levels for academics. My students say the issue is salary levels are uniform across the profession. Some areas of social work are particularly stressful and demanding such as child protection, but pay levels are uniform and people tend to move out of specialist child protection social work into other areas that, although challenging and valuable, are less stressful. That is a concern. The other issue is progression. I was very pleased when at the last meeting of the committee Tusla representatives spoke about the systems they were putting in place to develop a better career structure for social workers. We need more graduates at entry level, but the issue is retaining them. Part of the solution is providing a career structure.