asked the Minister for Education the number of social workers employed by his Department.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Social Workers.
10.
No social workers are employed by my Department.
Is it not an extraordinary situation given the small but important number of special schools for juvenile offenders which are under the direct control of the Department that the Department are employing no social workers?
The answer is a little thin I will admit. It is not quite as simple as that. Social workers are not directly employed by the Department although they are employed.
Are they working in the Minister's schools?
There is one social worker on the staff of each of the special schools for young offenders at Finglas Children's Centre, and at Scoil Ard Mhuire in Cork. The employer in each case is the director of the school but the salary of a social worker is met out of the school budget which is financed by the Department. The social worker's functions are in relation to the boys in residence in each school. The Department of Justice will shortly be seconding a welfare officer full time to each of the three special schools for young offenders, the two just mentioned and also St. Joseph's in Clonmel.
The Minister's supplementary answer spelt out that social workers were involved in the schools. Presumably the people who pay them are the people who call the tune. Perhaps the Minister will have the whole thing clarified. If social workers are working in schools in an educational context as a back-up service to an educational institution, their terms of reference should surely be decided by the educational masters of the schools and not by some outside body.
The Deputy must not have been listening. The director of the school surely could not be called an outside body.