Mr. Bernard Cantillon:

One of the difficulties is that there seemed to be different arrangements in departments across the different areas within the city and across the country. In some areas, social workers are told there is an expectation that they would reduce their mileage as a mechanism to save money.

On mileage and other areas, staff are told they cannot use a taxi, for example, to transport a young person because it costs money. All these factors add to the difficulty of doing the job. One ends with circumstances in which staff sometimes feel they have responsibility to visit a young person but cannot use the easiest mechanism to get to the placement while doing all the work they are expected to do. A resource issue on a wider level creates a lot of difficulty.

In some parts of Tusla, social workers end up doing a lot of administration work and carrying out many roles that are actually social care roles. We end up in circumstances in which, because there is a lack of social care workers, whose grade and profession is separate from that of social worker, social workers end up taking responsibility for the supervision and facilitation of family access and contact. This adds to the stress attached to the social worker role. Social workers are now not just responsible for managing the case and the care planning; they are also responsible for bringing children to placements and collecting them afterwards. The social worker might have to collect a child placed in Wexford, for example, bring that child to Dublin to see his or her parents and then drive him or her back to Wexford afterwards. In essence, one is making four trips in the day. One must, therefore, go up and down twice to make sure the young person sees his or her family. We want the children to see their families, which is important, but because we do not have the support staff to help us carry out the functions, social workers end up feeling they have to do everything. In addition, a lack of administrative staff in many departments has led to circumstances in which social workers are doing practically all their own filing. In many offices, there is no support to help with filing because there are not enough administration staff. I realise there is a public perception that there are too many administrative staff in the HSE and Tusla but the experience of social workers on the ground is that this is not true. We need the support of our colleagues in administration. We just need more of them.