Social workers tell of unacceptable risks in child protection

“There was one night that stands out when [children from X] were murdered […] I didn’t think my legs would take me up the stairs to look at the waiting list to see if they were on our waiting list. And I think that that kind of anxiety nobody should have to live with.”

Such is the psychological impact on social workers grappling with the possibility that children are exposed to unacceptable risk because of a failure to allocate a social worker where circumstances meet the threshold for intervention.

Research conducted in the Cork area by Olivia O’Connell, implementation officer with Tusla, found unallocated cases are primarily a result of insufficient appropriate staff, including team leaders, social workers, childcare leaders, family support workers, and admin support workers which leads to saturated caseloads.