Finian McGrath (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator. The Government has made the reform of services to vulnerable children and families a very high priority. Children about whom there are child protection concerns or who are awaiting the allocation of a dedicated social worker have their situations monitored by a social work duty intake team.Children about whom there is a child protection concern, but who are awaiting the allocation of a dedicated social worker, have their situation monitored by the social work duty intake team. The monitoring may involve a visit to the child, telephone contact with, for instance, the school or preschool or other relevant information. New information about possible risk increasing or decreasing to the child will inform the timeframe of the child being allocated his or her own named social worker.

All urgent and emergency cases notified to Tusla are dealt with immediately. Urgent and emergency cases could involve cases of abandonment, allegations of physical and sexual abuse, parental ill health and the need to find an immediate placement, or threat to the safety or life of a child by a third party.

The number of referrals to the child welfare and protection services provided by Tusla continues to rise. At the end of 2016, Tusla reported a total of 47,399 referrals for the year. Up to 60% of these were child welfare concerns, which were up 12% on 2015. The remaining 40% were child protection concerns, 5% up on 2015. As the Senator correctly pointed out, there are delays in allocating social workers to some children who are the subject of child protection or welfare concerns. It should be noted that cases waiting to be allocated to a social worker include new referrals, as well as children known to Tusla whose social worker is no longer available to them. This could be due to a resignation, a career break or a retirement.

Unallocated cases are a matter of serious concern to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Katherine Zappone, who has asked Tusla to provide her Department with regularly updated numbers of the unallocated cases with which it is dealing. The Minister also meets regularly with the Tusla board and the chief executive officer, and has identified the reduction of this waiting list as a key priority in its business case in 2017. The most recent figures supplied by Tusla indicate there were 25,384 open cases at the end of March 2017. Of these, 19,226 had been allocated to a social worker and 6,158 cases remain to be allocated. When Tusla was set up in 2014, there were almost 10,000 unallocated cases. This has been reduced to 5,413 at the end of 2016, a 20% reduction in 2016 alone at a time when referrals were rising.

It should be noted the majority of referrals to Tusla do not result in a child protection assessment, with 60% of all referrals deemed to be welfare referrals. Recent increases in family support programmes have been put in place to deal with welfare referrals and to ensure early intervention. Regarding welfare concerns, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs provides strategic and policy direction for children and young people's services committees, CYPSC, whose role is to co-ordinate community and family supports to include families with child welfare concerns. The abolition of unallocated cases remains a high priority, and recruitment and retention of social workers is linked to achieving targets in this area.

In the 12 months to February 2017, Tusla had a social work turnover rate of 8.4%. This compares favourably with other jurisdictions such as England where the 2016 turnover rate was approximately 15%. It remains a concern that despite Tusla’s increased efforts during 2016, including an intensive graduate recruitment campaign in Ireland, including Northern Ireland, recruitment of social workers continued to be challenging, requiring significant recruitment activity to achieve a modest increase in whole-time equivalent staff and to compensate for normal worker attrition rates with which Tusla must contend.

The number of social worker graduates annually in Ireland is between 200 and 250. Tusla is competing with social work services in mental health, hospital, disability, primary care and probation for this limited pool. It is likely the recruitment of social workers will continue to be challenging. For this reason Tusla launched an ongoing recruitment campaign for social workers on its website and it will also be expanding its 2017 graduate recruitment drive to England, Scotland and Wales.In order to allow social workers to focus on their core duties, Tusla is altering the make-up of teams to draw on other grades, such as social care workers, family support practitioners and clerical administration staff, as appropriate. The Government is committed to funding Tusla to drive forward the reforms and recruitment of the additional social worker complement. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs will continue to monitor progress closely in this regard. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, will continue to engage directly with the Tusla board and senior management team over the course of the year, to review the progress being made in reducing unacceptable numbers of cases that have not been allocated to a social worker.