Mr. Pat Smyth:

Back in 2014 we got 43,000 or 44,000 referrals. Referrals come from An Garda Síochána, teachers, or medical professionals. The volume was approximately 44,000 at that stage. When we kicked off we had just under 10,000 unallocated cases, which means cases which are waiting to be allocated to a social worker. Last year we had 57,000 referrals, which represents an increase of approximately 40% on that volume. There are good reasons behind that. The number of unallocated cases is down to 6,000. That number is higher than we want it to be. These cases are concentrated around five of our service areas. We have 17 service areas throughout the country. The unallocated cases are, in the main, in those five areas. We have gone through the first reason that the number of unallocated cases is high, which relates to staffing. We have also been doing a lot of work on our understanding. When Tusla was created we had 17 separate areas. We have a history going back to the days of the health boards, which is not that long ago. It was 2005. The systems remained independent of each other at that time. We did not have the same way of dealing with referrals in each of those 17 areas. The feature about which I talked earlier, the signs of safety model, is about ensuring that the same model of care and way of dealing with these cases is used across all areas.

Initial referrals into the system are normally triaged immediately and risk assessments are carried out. HIQA has consistently found that, even in circumstances in which the number of unallocated cases is very high, Tusla does not leave kids at risk. That initial process, within the first 24 hours, is about seeing whether the referral is high risk and whether the kid needs to be seen. We then go into a process of initial assessment and then allocation. Depending on the complexity of the case, the initial assessment can take a bit of time.

We are quite engaged in the analysis of the actual assessment and working with the people who refer children to us at the moment. We get a lot of referrals from An Garda Síochána. We have been trying to work with An Garda, as well as with teachers, schools and others, to put in place systems which will give us a lot more information about the referral. In light of the massive increase in referrals, we are trying to ensure that we get information that makes sense and on which we can make good assessments.