Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 10 April 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs
Recruitment and Retention of Social Workers: Discussion (Resumed)
Professor Robbie Gilligan:
While our students are supernumerary and they are not paid, they undertake real work with real people. From early in their placement, they are meeting real people with real issues and providing services to them. They are obviously closely supervised in doing that. They are learning through doing. It is a fundamental and important principle of social work training like in many other disciplines. They are making a contribution in the organisations in which they are studying.