Mr. Bernard Cantillon:

In an ideal situation, social workers would just have 15 cases. In terms of children-in-care caseloads, they are expected to facilitate the care planning for these young people. They have to meet the children or young people and try to work on what they want and on their wishes. They must also explain to them why they are in care and why what is happening in their lives is happening. Children always have questions as to why they are in care, why they are not living with their mum and dad and so on. If there are court proceedings taking place, social workers are expected to write and compile court reports, as well as to link in with other professionals and solicit reports from them on what is happening for the young person involved. This might include getting reports from speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, general practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists and others. Social workers are constantly having conversations and holding meetings with other professionals.

The social workers travel to those meetings, chair them and bring everyone together. They meet families to look at supports in the wider family. We call such meetings family welfare conferences. While a meeting might take an hour, days or weeks of planning can go into them. The social workers will have had to meet individual relatives to explain why the process is taking place and how they can be part of it. They must allow these relatives time to think about what they can bring to the meeting because we do not want people coming to the meeting and turning to the social worker to ask what they are going to do. It is about helping people to see what they can bring to the table to help their relative who is experiencing-----