Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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718. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality whether TUSLA has emergency out-of-hours social workers available nationwide. [33976/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Tusla National Out of Hours Social Work Service provides an emergency child protection and welfare response when required outside of office hours, when service area offices are closed. The Out of Hours Service aims to ensure the safety and welfare of children not receiving adequate care and protection outside of Tusla’s operating hours.

The Service provides emergency placements for children as required and operates 365 days a year from 6pm to 7am daily and from 9am to 5pm at weekends and bank holidays. However, there are three categories of Out of Hours service operating currently within the country, one for counties Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare, another for Cork city and a third for all other counties.

The Out of Hours Service also provides a day service called CISP (Crisis intervention Service Partnership). It is a partnership project with Focus Ireland in place via a Service Level Agreement overseen by Children's Residential Services.

The day service role and responsibilities include follow up on all referrals and placements made by the Out of Hours Service at night-time and at weekends. It also assesses requests for monitoring home visits for the Dublin Wicklow and Kildare area during weekends and bank holidays and links the child and family to the local area team for follow-up on the next working day to ensure an immediate response to serious situations.