‘High caseloads inhibit social workers’ ability to meet practice expectations’

Social workers may be unable to meet the recommendations made in various child abuse inquiry reports because of the high number of children assigned to them, claim academics in University College Cork.

The latest edition of the Irish Journal of Applied Social Sciences, dedicated to child abuse reports including the Ryan and Roscommon reports, includes the claim.

Kenneth Burns and Joe MacCarthy of the School of Applied Social Studies, state “current practices... indicate that the ‘apparently’ high caseloads carried by these [social work] teams inhibit their ability to meet the practice expectations resulting from the recommendations of child abuse inquiry reports”.