Mr. Joe McCarthy:

I put it like that to show just how significant and important this issue of staff retention and recruitment within Tusla is. We are talking more specifically about staff retention and recruitment within child protection and welfare services. When we talk about the recruitment and retention of social workers within child protection and family welfare, we are talking about child protection. In essence, we are talking about the regard we give it, how we value it, and what we are doing about it. Politicians know better than I do that child protection in the history of our relatively new Republic and State has not always been a priority, and the contrary has been the case. This is what gave rise to our industrial schools and the various scandals of the Magdalen laundries, mother and baby homes and institutional abuse at various levels. I am delighted that child protection and welfare is within the political arena, which is where it belongs. We are talking about political commitments and priorities. It has not always got the priority and the commitment it deserves. We are talking here about the most vulnerable of society, the hidden side that has been referred to by Ms McGuirk.

I was following very closely the conversation the committee had with the Irish Foster Care Association, and that raised some very interesting topics which were raised also by speakers on other days. One of the dangers is that we run the risk of reducing the very complex work of child protection and social work to a set of tasks and duties. There is almost the impression that anybody can do this work. I do not believe it is as black and white or as simple as that and is far more complex.

It would be very difficult to give the committee a picture of what a social worker does at any given time because they have different roles. Once referral comes in and is activated, the assessment begins immediately of what is to be done, what the identified needs are, followed by the putting in place of a plan of action and engagement with the family and children to see what is to be done. There may be different people involved with that. The duty and intake section does the screening and initial contact, and then decisions are made whether further contact or assessment is needed. The decision may be to go to court or not or to work in the community with preventative and supportive work.

One thing that was mentioned earlier and which is key to all of this, and this was mentioned by one of the previous speakers, is that social work, be it child protection or otherwise, is about getting involved in people's lives, intervening with them, trying to make a difference, and having good outcomes. That depends very much on the individual and training, but essentially it rests on the relationship that can be built up between the social worker and the child or the family. One of the aspects at the nub of the current crisis is that for various reasons and due to a lot of significant developments recently, social workers in child protection have transformed that role from what it was 15 years ago and it is not recognisable now. That core piece of work in having enough time to develop a relationship with a child or a family to make a difference over time, which for many is at the core of social work in any setting, is not possible. Perhaps the committee might be able to explore a little further the developments that have taken place in the past ten to 15 years. Social work, like any other profession, happens in a particular context. This was mentioned by other speakers on other occasions, where it is acknowledged by observers in the social work field that the decision to create a Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the subsequent establishment of Tusla as the child and family agency was a political imperative and very welcome. It was set up far too quickly with a totally insufficient budget. That accounts to a great extent for the immediate problems we might be experiencing. Tusla was expected to do an awful lot and did not have the wherewithal to do it. It was set up too with a budget that was and still is totally insufficient.