Mr. Bernard O'Regan:

We will share the questions if that is okay. I might take the children's service issues first and then come back to the question about safeguarding at the end.

In terms of the recruitment blockages, we have been trying to establish what the issues are. We are meeting the unions and they are consulting their members. We are also trying to share information. The types of issues that are being raised by staff - these are not necessarily in order - are pay and conditions, facilities and career structure. There is also a sense that if a person is on a team that has a low level of staffing and the team is under huge pressure from being unable to meet the need that is there, the stress of the job makes it harder to work and there is a risk that some members of the team will move. It gets worse instead of getting better. Those are some of the factors for staff.

We are working with our estates colleagues on a capital plan and investment to try to improve the physical environment where that is needed. We are building a new career structure. We have agreed that some of the posts that were funded will be used to create exclusively senior posts. In the first instance, there is a campaign to give the opportunity for promotion to those currently working in the teams and the residual posts will be advertised more openly. We are trying to learn and we will continue to do that. We have a forum of regular engagement with staff through the unions.

There are challenges with reimbursement to families. We are not able to do that. It has come up and we have looked at it ourselves to see if there is any means by which we could do it, but we just do not have the right legal landscape.