Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

What I am taking from this is that this committee has to go to the relevant people and tell them that a body or forum has to be set up, bringing all of the agencies together, to find a policy or a direction. Is it correct to say that is one of the recommendations to emerge from this meeting?

How can placements be found for these students? It is a major issue. I do not know how anyone is able to cope given the situation with expenses. Some people are already paying for these courses so there are large expenses involved, which does not help in attracting candidates. On retention, do the witnesses have any ideas for changes in policies they would like to see? As Professor Gilligan said, there is a hole in the bucket. We have to look at this approach. I do not know how we could carry out a public recruitment drive to bring people in unless the problem is fixed.

Why are we losing social workers? We have been told many times in this committee, and I have heard it myself outside of the Houses, that the turnover is unbelievable. That has a knock-on effect on the children, particularly those in child protection. What are Tusla and other agencies doing wrong? What do we need to do to retain staff? Organisations have appeared here and told us that some social workers have 30 cases. Should we be thinking outside the box and looking at how things are done in other jurisdictions?