Ms Kate Duggan:

I will start with the increase in referrals to Tusla and the change in the reporting system. That was just about a change we made internally relating to the inclusion of all the welfare referrals into the overall referral rates for Tusla. That is what that refers to.

I will respond to the questions in the order in which I have captured them so we can come back. As for the increase in complexity, particularly in respect of special emergency arrangements, I will talk the Senator through the profile of special emergency arrangements as to where they are and the numbers in a moment. At a point in time, in trying to understand the factors that were contributing to these young people coming into care and many of them being volunteered into care at an older age, when we looked at the underlying contributing factors, we looked at nine indicating factors. A significant number of the children, almost most of them, had at least three or four factors. They range from disability, mental health issues, and domestic, sexual and gender-based violence to really struggling to access mental health services and not being able to access early intervention and disability services or addiction services. There is also the exploitation by the criminal gangs and the fears their parents had for their own safety in that regard. I can touch on that further.

As for special emergency arrangements, the most recent data we have show that, in respect of 10 September, there were 62 children in such arrangements. Within that, it is important to say that only one person was in a hotel. That is something we in the agency have taken very seriously to ensure that there are not young people in hotels or, if they are, that they are there for the very shortest time possible. Of the 62 children, it is also important to say that 53% are over 16. They are in that 16-to-17-year age bracket. Some 43.5% of them are there because there has been a breakdown in a family dynamic and a home arrangement. That is where there has been a breakdown in the home, they are referred to us, and the complexity or the need or the level of risk is so high that we have had to take them into care immediately. It is also important to say that more than half of those young people are in those arrangements for less than eight weeks. That is too long and it is not something we want, but we do recognise the need for a new continuum of emergency care that gives a greater level of independence while being able to provide more integrated services to meet the needs of the young people who are there.

As for the outcome of the meeting on the UCD report and the update, we have also met with the SERP team. We met from two perspectives, first just to make sure that we had assurances that any concerns they had about an individual had been reported to Tusla or the Garda. The whole area of sexual exploitation is something we have been concerned about. I can talk from my own experience. When I came into the agency, we worked very hard in 2021 with the Garda. The Garda has established a particular operation with the force that is about child sexual exploitation. The implementation of that was around lowering the threshold for referral, training all our staff in looking for the signs of any exploitation, including criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation, and making that referral to the Garda at a much lower threshold. What we have seen is that in 2021 Tusla made 14 referrals of child sexual exploitation to the Garda. When we changed our protocol and increased our training, that increased to 27 reports in 2022, and year to date in 2023 there have been 27 reports to the Garda. It is also important to say that in 2023, of the 27 so far, seven are children living in the community whom we are concerned about. They are not in care, so it is a matter of very close engagement with the Garda in responding to them. We have also audited for ourselves where there was a concern in any known case about sexual exploitation within our residential services, and we hear regular reporting on that. Our focus is very much also on engaging with the young people, recognising that some of them do not actually recognise they are being exploited. There is certainly a huge amount of work to be done just around awareness. We are very proud to be the official partner with MECPATHS in respect of its training, not just the training it is doing for Tusla staff and funded staff but across wider organisation. That is very important to us.

As to the Senator's queries about unallocated cases, I will let Mr. Brophy, our chief social worker, talk her through the definition. The most important thing I need to say about building a level of trust within the agency is that when we talk about an unallocated case, it is where a case is not allocated to a social worker.

Most such cases are allocated to another qualified professional who is able to respond to the child’s needs. We are committed to ensuring that the social work within community services is recognised as a valued profession. When we speak about allocating cases, it is about allocating them to the right professionals.

We have done a great deal of work on responding to unallocated cases. The latest figures, which are from June, show a 15% decrease in the number of cases awaiting allocation since January. This is probably as a direct result of the new care pathway that we have introduced to address a number of children with high and complex needs but who are considered low-harm cases where it is more about the cumulative effect of neglect and welfare concerns. We have employed domestic violence workers and have looked at social care workers and a different pathway so that those children are responded to earlier. The new care pathway is at five pilot sites where we have the highest levels of unallocated cases. We are confident that we are making progress.