Barry Cowen
Question:65Deputy Barry Cowen asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the number of social workers she intends to have in post at the end of 2012; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8093/12]
View answerTuesday, 14 February 2012
Questions (9)
Oral answers (5 contributions)
The HSE compiles a monthly census of employment in the public health and social care sector. The latest data available is in respect of December 2011. This shows that the total number of social workers employed in the HSE and in directly funded agencies at that time was 2,442 whole time equivalents.
The HSE made provision for the recruitment of an additional 62 social workers in 2011 and advised in December that all of these posts were either filled or accepted. I understand from the HSE that not all of the 2011 cohort of additional staff are reflected in the employment census as yet owing to the time lag between candidates being offered positions, taking up duty and appearing in the employment census returns.
The HSE national service plan for 2012, which was recently approved by the Minister for Health, includes provision for 3,142 whole time equivalent staff across the Children and Families Service, including social workers. This compares with a projected 2011 return of 3118 whole time equivalents.
The HSE national service plan sets out a range of reforms and performance measures to guide the improvement of child welfare and protection services. Other priorities in the 2012 service plan include delivery of consistent family support services and development of a national protocol on supervision orders; improving the collection of accurate data on services and on children in care, including procurement of the National Child Care Information System; establishing a national child protection register; developing consistent risk assessment and measurement tools; a greater focus on quality assurance and auditing of workloads; preparing and implementing a workforce development plan for child and family services; and continuing the implementation of national standards for pre-school services.
The Government has made additional budgeting provision for these services compared to the funding made available last year. This provides a further impetus to the comprehensive reform of service delivery which is underway and which is aimed at generating the best possible outcomes for vulnerable children and families. Extra funding has been made available, amounting to €21 million this year. There is a reform process under way and a very big job to be done delivering what is outlined in the HSE's service plan.
The Minister outlined many challenges that must be addressed in regard to child protection services. I agree with her entirely in this regard. One of the challenges she has had to address in the past year is the appointment of the 60 additional social workers. According to her figures, ten of the 60 were in place at the end of 2011. My question is very specific - how many social workers does she plan to have in place by the end of 2012? She stated the number for the end of 2011 was 2,442. What will the equivalent figure be at the end of 2012?
I was very disappointed to hear the Minister state in her earlier contributions on the retirement of social workers that, despite the Ryan report recommendation to engage in a process of recruiting social workers, she did not outline any plan as to how the staff will be replaced. She stated it will be the task of the HSE to decide whether each should be replaced. This is totally in contradiction with the recent work on trying to increase the number of social workers. From my assessment of the HSE figures, there were 71 social workers to leave. The Minister's number is lower. I would be interested in knowing which of the 71 staff would not be regarded as being at the front line by the Minister. Will the Minister state specifically how many social workers in the area of child protection will be in place at the end of 2012? There were 2,442 at the end of December 2011.
I will repeat my remarks because the Deputy seems to have difficulty understanding them. I got the funding for the 60 social workers by the end of last year. Twenty-five of the 60 – ten is a different figure – have been recruited. All of the others have been offered or have accepted posts. I could not be clearer. The 60 social workers will be in place over the next few weeks, and that is extremely important.
I have succeeded in having €21 million extra allocated for child services and protection as opposed to the €14 million reduction that the last Government oversaw. I have succeeded in recruiting 60 additional social workers, 25 of whom are already in place.
I have told the Deputy the number of staff in place at present. The national director of children and family services, Mr. Gordon Jeyes, will be examining the gaps caused by the 45 staff who are leaving. The local and regional managers are assessing the impact of the retirements. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis depending on the priorities that are deemed necessary and on what the local and regional managers say to Mr. Jeyes. I certainly want to maintain the numbers in place and to ensure that, where there are priority needs, the director will have discretion. Since the director has the budget at present, he has the discretion to replace those deemed to be in priority positions. I have reached agreement on the recruitment of the new multidisciplinary team for the children in special care. The initiatives are taking place. They will all mean the referrals in the HSE will be dealt with as comprehensively as possible.
The Minister is now saying there is no plan for establishing the number of social workers to be in place at the end of 2012. Despite all the work over recent years, the recommendation of the Ryan report stating there should be 270 additional social workers employed, and the Minister's stating in the Dáil over the past year that she was working towards delivering these posts by the end of 2011, she is now saying there is no longer a target for the number of social workers who will be employed in the area of child protection. She is saying she will transfer responsibility in this regard to the HSE, thus absolving herself of responsibility. It makes a mockery of what we have been doing.
The Minister needs to take responsibility for this. We need a plan for the replacement of the social workers who are retiring. We need an acknowledgement that they are essential to a robust child protection and welfare system and that they will, as a consequence, be replaced. We need to know the Minister will come up with a plan to ensure this.
I repeat that there is a very clear plan in place. It has included the successful recruitment of the 60 social workers whom I have said would be recruited, resulting in a total of 270 social workers. The number was reflected in and required by the Ryan implementation plan. Some 260 of the 270 social workers have been recruited and are about to take up their positions. The Deputy seems to find this very hard to understand. The remaining 25 of the 60 have taken up their positions and the rest will do so. They have accepted their positions and will be in place.
The multidisciplinary team will be in place. It has been needed for many years and was never put in place. The team will be recruited this year. The budget is in place. There has been an increase of €21 million, as opposed to a decrease of €14 million under the previous Government, for work in child and family services. An extra 37 social workers are working in child and family protection. There is, therefore, a very comprehensive plan in place. There is a clear plan to collect the kind of data that were never collected over the past ten years. It is very difficult to plan if one does not collect the data and if one cannot compare what is happening in one part of the country with what is happening in another. All that work is under way. The data are being collected in a much more comprehensive way. This means we can plan the services more comprehensively and, therefore, meet the needs better.
I have maintained and increased the number of social workers and the budget in this area at a very difficult time in our economic history.