Professor Michelle Norris:

We are currently part of a committee established by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, which is considering increasing places on social work training programmes, as Dr. Halton mentioned.

That has been a positive development for us. At that meeting colleagues from the HSE raised the issue that this was also a barrier in some of the health professions and that they have moved to try to regularise these arrangements. We also have concerns about the impact of this on the student experience. I acknowledge the social workers who take our students on placement and provide a super service and are very committed to what we call practice teaching, in other words, supporting students' learning on placement. Because the student does not have a formal role in the organisation it can mean there is an uneven experience in terms of having office space etc. Students are often required to travel for work. They take on a proportion of a qualified social worker's caseload and are expected to manage that so they are required to use their car. They are not able to claim expenses for mileage. Most of our students are young people and for students in full-time education, these issues can be quite significant barriers. The placement issue is a critical one for us.