Mr. Bill Hicks is from the Traveller unit of the community welfare section of SIPTU and Mr. Michael Cunningham is from the homeless unit. Mr. Curtain, who is from Tralee, had hoped to meet the Chairman, Deputy Healy-Rae.
On behalf of my colleagues, I thank the joint committee for its kind invitation to make a submission regarding the proposed transfer of the community welfare service from the Health Service Executive to the Department of Social and Family Affairs. Departmental officials from the management side shared their perspective on this matter only a few months ago.
As this is the third occasion on which representatives from the service have appeared before the joint committee - the text of previous submissions is included for members' information as appendices to the submission - I propose to concentrate on the following key areas: the inescapable logic of leaving the service where it is; the dual functionality of the service; the discretion and flexibility which are vital features of the service; and the delivery of the service from multiple locations within local communities.
To start with a key argument, I will cite a US Government official of the 1930s, a gentleman called Bert Lance, who was credited with the famous line, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It has never been demonstrated to us that the community welfare service is broken. For more than 30 years, it has responded to a range of issues, problems and circumstances effectively, efficiently, promptly and creatively in line with its core objectives of alleviating social distress and working to prevent its recurrence, as enunciated at its inception by Mr. Frank Cluskey in the following terms:
If the grave social problems which lead to eligibility for social welfare allowance are to be solved and if the persons concerned are to be supported and helped to achieve their rightful place in the community, then there must be genuine connection between the income maintenance service and personal social services. It is generally accepted that effective personal social services should have a sound community basis which can be ensured by the work of the community care sections of the health boards.
As someone who has been proud to work in the service for most of the intervening period, it is not credible to characterise as intelligent or productive health reform the severing of this connection between income maintenance service and personal social services, which forms the bridge between poverty and health. In planning to implement the transfer, perhaps conscious of the original good reason the community welfare service was located administratively within the health boards, officials have curiously misdefined health and personal services as referring only to schemes.
The unpalatable truth which needs to be acknowledged is that in the event that the community welfare service is moved to the Department of Social and Family Affairs, such an immediate multidisciplinary response may not be provided as quickly and efficiently as heretofore and a bank of local knowledge would be lost to the Health Service Executive, leaving a void in terms of linking communities to the health service system. It is perverse to imagine that community welfare staff have a vital role to play within the primary care model and should, therefore, be removed from the HSE on the flimsy pretext that their function is not a core one. It is difficult not to suspect that other agendas are at play, specifically that the Department of Social and Family Affairs, which to date has not acknowledged or valued the wider welfare role, now wishes to exercise a direct control which would be narrower in its scope and more prescriptive in its delivery.
The dual functionality of the service is one of its main strengths which has been taken for granted in the context of the decision to relocate the service. A community welfare service without the benefit of the SWA scheme could not function effectively without the supports of the community care structure within the health service. The functions performed in society by the Departments of Social and Family Affairs and Health and Children require a joint response in many instances. The community welfare service provides this response and, in doing so, helps achieve the objectives of both agencies.
The SWA scheme, as a residual, supplementary and discretionary service, is an integral element of the wider community care structure, which enables a holistic multidisciplinary response - one which contrasts with the Department's entitlements based approach - to be taken to the needs of the vulnerable individual and-or family. At the risk of stating the obvious, does a "Humpty Dumpty" manoeuvre of breaking up and dismantling the service and sending one group of 167 community welfare officers and another group of 738 community welfare officers in two different directions represent the best way of preserving dual functionality? I do not believe that is the case.
Many who work in the service and who realise that the health reform arguments do not really hold up to scrutiny are convinced that this is being used as a convenient device to virtually abolish the service by stealth. Discretion and flexibility are features that are unique and vital to the service and our being located at one step remove from the Department is an essential guarantee to their being exercised without interference. There have been assurances that these will be preserved and it has been stated that the clauses in the Social Welfare and Pensions Acts 2007 and 2008 which are subject to commencement orders do not in any way change the primary legislation in this regard. That is not entirely true.
By seeking to render CWOs as civil servants and, therefore, employees under the direct control of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the freedom, the independence and the buffer that goes with being at one step remove will be gone and the context in which discretion and flexibility are exercised will be radically altered. This is the same Department that has, on multiple occasions - quietly and sometimes not so quietly - suppressed its frustration in respect of this very issue. To translate the message in its politest form, it was a case of "use your discretion but not too much or not in that way". If or when we are moved, the Department of Social and Family Affairs will be much better placed to rein in the exercise of discretion.
The community welfare services is currently delivered from almost 1,000 locations, approximately 200 of which are base CWO locations. There are 58 Department of Social and Family Affairs local offices and yet we are informed that co-location will be considered on an ongoing basis. The manner in which it is proposed that staffing resources will be distributed will further threaten the reach and accessibility of the service. For purposes of administering the services of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, virtually every CWO district in every operational area outside the eastern region would need to be redrawn, with fewer staff being obliged to cover the same ground. In Clare it will be 14 officers from 19, in Louth 11 from 17, in Sligo-Leitrim ten from 17, in Laois-Offaly 12 from 19.6, in Kerry 18 from 24 and so on. It is clear the prospects are such that the first casualty of the transfer proceeding would be the delivery of the service from its current range of multiple locations within local communities.
Although the terms and conditions of those working in the community welfare service will be adversely affected, this is not about resistance to change or improving the odds of obtaining a pay off. There is always a mechanism for resolving industrial relations issues. However, the bottom line remains that the transfer is founded on a false premise which is ill-conceived and which is not viable in operational terms.
