Professor Robbie Gilligan:

I support what has just been said by my colleague. There is also the point about whether we can learn from good practices in other jurisdictions. The answer is clearly "yes" and we need to do some work on that. If there was a national forum, one of its tasks would be to identify good practice models from elsewhere in terms of early career support for new social workers. I am aware from examples of our students or colleagues abroad that there are very well-protected caseloads in the early or first years of work with very high-quality and dedicated case supervision. I know there are other types of supervision as well, but good quality case supervision is very important. I discussed with a fellow professor in England the other day the very good practices in her local area, with the local equivalent of Tusla having developed a new model of close supervision of practice by social workers that has revolutionised retention rates. It is not like things cannot make a difference. They can but there needs to be co-ordinated and consistent effort to move in that direction across different employers.