Tusla facing 'serious challenge' to recruit social workers

The Tusla CEO will say his agency focused 'almost exclusively' throughout the first months of the pandemic on ensuring the provision of domestic and sexual violence responses, child protection, and children in care services.

Recruitment of new social workers now represents a “serious challenge” according to the head of child and family agency, Tusla.

The chief executive of the agency, Bernard Gloster, will tell the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) tomorrow that spending on temporary agency staff decreased by €19.5m in 2020. However, he will add that Tusla, like the HSE, has developed “an increasing dependence” on such workers in recent years.

“Within the workforce social work recruitment and retention remains a serious challenge,” Mr Gloster will tell the committee, adding that “increased supply and retention efforts alone will not deal with this issue”.

He is expected to stress the need for “multi-disciplinary teams” for carrying out child protection and associated welfare work.

Tusla currently employs roughly 5,000 people.

Mr Gloster will tell the committee that despite a “concerning decrease” in referrals in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in March and April of that year, overall referrals eventually recovered having been “proactively addressed”.

All told, some 69,712 referrals were made to Tusla in 2020, including 22,356 involving children receiving a family support service.

Those figures would indicate that referrals for child protection and welfare fell from 56,561 in 2019 to 47,356 in 2020, a 16% reduction.

Some 21,143 children of a “specific level of concern” required a continuing social work service throughout 2020, Mr Gloster will tell the committee, split between 15,261 children living at home and 5,882 living in State care.

The Tusla CEO will say his agency focused “almost exclusively” throughout the first months of the pandemic on ensuring the provision of domestic and sexual violence responses, child protection, and children in care services.

He will express his “concern” at the “long-term challenges” for some Tusla-funded organisations in the community and voluntary sector.

“These organisations, many of them service providers, are critical to the effectiveness of the agency,” Mr Gloster will say, adding that the “long-term solution to their challenge is beyond the scope of Tusla”.

He will say that 18 months out of the past 24 have been “characterised by two major events” — Covid-19 and the cyberattack on the HSE’s systems in May 2021 which reduced the health service to a standstill.

The PAC is expected to discuss the costs incurred by Tusla as a result of the cyberattack, together with the agency’s ongoing reliance on the HSE for the provision of its IT services, together with the €6.3m in non-compliant procurement carried out by Tusla in 2020.