Out-of-hours social work service ‘too restrictive’

Tusla’s long-awaited after- hours and weekend social work service is “too restrictive” and needs to be expanded, according to the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC).

It says children, especially those in care, and professionals working with children, should be able to directly access social workers at night and weekends without going through the Gárda Siochána.

At present, all emergency calls for social work help must be made to the gardaí, who then either contact a national social work call centre or local on-call social workers, depending on where in the country the caller is ringing from.

The ISPCC said that while the out-of-hours social work service developed by Tusla in 2015 was an improvement, it is “not a long-term solution”.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child last year said: “In practice, the out-of-hours social work emergency service is insufficient and there are insufficient accessible counselling services for children affected by abuse.”

ISPCC head of advocacy, Mary Nicholson said: “Children and those concerned about a child should have direct access to a social worker out of hours. Having to contact a garda station to seek support is unacceptable. Furthermore, children who are brought into the care system should have access to a social worker/multi-disciplinary support, irrespective of the time.

“A properly resourced 24-hour professional social care service, that includes a crisis response mechanism to respond to emergency situations as they arise, is required. The current system is so restricted that people often have nowhere to turn to. We know through our Childline service that the majority of over 400,000 calls we received last year were received outside the hours of 9-5, Monday to Friday.”

However, a senior social worker has said “daytime social work service should be bolstered before Tusla consider bolstering the out of hours service”.

“Yes, we need to broaden the range of professionals who can contact on-call social workers to expand beyond just gardaí,” he said. “But to replicate day services at night would be a waste of scarce resources.”

According to a Tusla source, three out-of-hours schemes operate across the country. In the greater Dublin area of Dublin, Kildare, and Wicklow, the Crisis Intervention Scheme allows ambulance and hospital staff, as well as gardaí, to contact the on-call social work team.

In Cork, gardaí act as the sole ‘gatekeeper’ and are at the end of the emergency phoneline for children. They then contact the duty on-call social work team. In the rest of the country, if a person contacts the garda social work line, the garda then contacts the national social work call centre which acts as a triage or advice service and can forward the call to the local on-call social work team.

Under the various schemes, children can all be placed in emergency care at night or over the weekend if necessary.

The out-of-hours scheme was introduced in 2015 after agreement was reached with social worker unions.