Ms Deirdre O'Shea:

We are satisfied that there was a positive response when we investigated all of the recommendations made.

We were concerned about the increasing level of referrals over time to the children and family services. There is a need for ongoing monitoring of the capacity of the children and family services to respond to referrals. The critical issues in north Lee relate to the high referral rate, the level of response times and the difficulty in responding within the timeframes that are required as part of the Children First guidance and the Child Protection Welfare Practice handbook, particularly in terms of carrying out initial assessments. The difficulty is that if there is a delay in carrying out the initial assessments, that impacts on how quickly concerns can be responded to and establishing the seriousness of those concerns in respect of the children who are being referred to the services. We saw that the area took a number of steps locally to look at how they might respond to the increasing referral level. They were holding meetings with local community services to look at how some cases might be intercepted at an earlier stage and directed through to family support and prevention rather than awaiting social work intervention. Clearly there is a need for ongoing monitoring of the referral rates both in terms of allegations of child abuse as well as child welfare cases.