Mr. Bernard Gloster:

Essentially, the biggest challenge for us in the agency is consistency, because we have many good practices and approaches in different counties, and it is a matter of the translation of that across the whole system. The overall improvement measured by HIQA and assessed as “compliant” and “substantially compliant” against the standards in child protection, residential care and foster care suggests to us we are moving in the right direction in terms of consistency. We are now up to up to approximately 81% compliant in that. This is a quite significant rating but it is nothing to be complacent about.

Where consistency is perhaps harder and a challenge for us, particularly on the unallocated cases, and we have made some improvements on the higher priority cases, is not just shared learning throughout the country but also, and this has been well rehearsed in this committee and in other forums I have been in, the issue of staff, demand on staffing, staff turnover and availability of staff. This continues to present us with a challenge and that is the route. If the workforce is not consistent, you are constantly trying to catch up with the new workforce to bring them on board. It is a work in progress. I am not going to say it is perfect because it is not.