Mr. Ger Brophy:

On the subject of unallocation, in particular children in care, we are concerned about any child in care who is unallocated. Over recent years we have had a prioritisation in place, which is different from the high, medium and low that we talk about in child protection and welfare cases. For children in care to be unallocated, they would have to be in a stable placement. Their needs would have to recognised as being less than other children's needs, so that the children with the greatest needs would be prioritised. We have a system for that - high, medium and low - which is separate from the child protection and welfare one. Typically, those children would be in long-term stable placements. They would not be in residential care. If they were in residential care, they would be prioritised for allocation. They would be with foster carers, perhaps, with whom they might have been for a long period of time. They would still have somebody to do their care planning with them, but it would not be an ongoing contact with an allocated social worker. There is no doubt that this is not the service we would desire for those children. Typically it would be a social care worker, a family support worker or, in some cases, an access worker who might have a relationship with those children over a long period of years, would know the extended family and would organise or supervise that access.

Those unallocated children in care typically are not the ones of highest need. We also try to make sure we have foster link workers, or link workers as we call them internally. A social worker working with a foster family would be allocated to those children. Again, they would have a relationship with those foster parents if a social worker were not available in the community. While they would not be an allocated social worker, they are a link with those children. We are trying to be as flexible as we can to ensure the person who knows those children best and the children with the recognised least need are the ones who are unallocated on that list. However, they still get a service.