Ms Aisling McGrory:

As my colleagues said, it is very hard to define. It depends on the family, the case, the child and the need. In the two schools I am working with, not everybody would be open to a CDNT. There might be more children who are primary care, but it might be different. There might be issues, and I meet children individually, with bullying or relationships and things like that. It is very hard to say what the caseload is and what a safe caseload is. We talk about that and about prioritisation. CDNTs are doing a lot of work nationally on prioritisation and wait-listing. The Irish Association of Social Workers has a progressing disability subgroup as well. We have done a prioritisation tool. Tusla has a model on this as well. We developed our own model and trialled it as well in a pilot project around prioritising. We look at the complexity of the disability, whether there are any safeguarding issues, how many children are at home or whether they are homeless. There are lots of different social and medical factors that we take into consideration in what we are doing.

There could be a case, and I am thinking about some of the cases I am very invested in, where there could be multiple meetings. It may concern a child in foster care and there could be service input from Tusla, schools, the CRC, which was mentioned, and CDNT therapists. You could go to a family where there are literally lists of different people involved. I have done that. I have done a print-out of who is involved - like a who's who for the family. This is because people are picking up the phone to ask me whether somebody is under social work or SLT. People get confused because so many people are involved. I want to make life as simple and easy for everybody as I can. That is hard when you have a high number of cases because, sometimes, you are over-committed. Some of the things are quite short. Somebody might need a bit of support with a domiciliary care allowance, DCA, application, or a letter or something, or a phone call to the council about accommodation or homelessness or whatever it is. There are then other ones that take a lot of time, investment and eyes-on talking to the child, the school, Tusla and whoever is at home. It is very difficult to manage that.

We are always working around prioritisation, wait-list and what is safe, but also advocating for more of our own disciplines, the other disciplines we recognise working together and how that can benefit the child, and his or her family and future.