Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is quite unsatisfactory because it is not addressing the key point of structural problems within the social work service that mean people move on quickly, which makes for a bad service. The key problems for children in care, in particular, include the high turnover of social workers. Further, there are 464 children currently in care who do not have an allocated social worker. Will the Minister give her urgent attention to a number of measures to recruit and retain staff? One of those is to restructure the social work teams in place and to restore the senior practitioner role which was taken away. Another measure is to provide investment. Rather than international recruitment, which is so expensive, will she invest in some incentives for social workers to stay, such as paid extended leave? The other area is ensuring there is a proper career structure so that we can hold onto social workers and they are not going off abroad.

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