Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her compliment for Mr. Gloster.

Tusla is exploring its sponsorship initiatives in an effort to increase the number of students studying social work, and thereby, increasing the supply of social workers available to the agency. This is happening and I expect this will produce some results as well.

We have been engaging directly with the Department of Education and Skills and there are officials from that Department on the working group established by my Department to look at how to increase the number of places at third level. The first thing that has to happen, as indicated in the first part of my response, is that we need to have a streamlined placement services for the students which has not happened yet. This makes it more difficult for universities to increase their supply of spaces unless it is easier for them to place students, as we do for doctors and nurses etc. That will happen.

There are some changes in the retention. The survey of workers identified that if they are supervised and supported by a stable management team, and, in particular, a team leader, they will want to stay. If they have a manageable caseload, they will want to stay even more. If they work alongside a fully-staffed, stable and experienced team, they will want to remain longer again. All those issues are being addressed.

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