Fergus Finlay: We urgently need more social workers to protect vulnerable children

There are families and children in real trouble and they simply have nowhere to turn

There is only one way to ensure that every vulnerable child who needs a social worker has access to one — treble the number of places being offered on social work courses.

Corporate and faceless. That’s the description — almost the dictionary definition — of a bureaucracy that doesn’t care. And it’s the description applied this weekend by three judges to Tusla, the national agency that is responsible for the protection of children. Especially children at risk.

The judges all work in this area. It must be a mark of their frustration and anxiety that they sat down with a reporter from a national newspaper to outline how they felt. The result was a page-long cry from the heart. They made a distinction between the social workers employed by Tusla and the organisation itself.