BUDGET 2016: Extra €38m for Tusla not enough, says Barnardos

The Child and Family Agency, Tusla, is to get an extra €38m next year, but Barnardos says it is not enough to discharge its statutory responsibilities.

The children’s charity said continued under-funding of Tusla put further children at risk and they would remain at risk until money was spent on proper preventative services.

Responding last night, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, James Reilly, said the Government had been very concerned about the issue.

Dr Reilly said funding of over €675m was provided for Tusla next year, an increase of €38m on this year’s provision.

The minister said he had allocated targeted funding to address the findings of a recent national audit of child welfare and protection cases awaiting allocation to a social worker.

“When Tusla raised the issue of unallocated cases with me, I instructed the agency to conduct a full audit of cases so that I could credibly approach Government with a plan to address this problem.”

The minister said he had been advised by Tusla that it was “well advanced” in recruiting 218 additional social workers and his department had given it funding to recruit a further 174 next year.

Dr Reilly said “performance monitoring” would be used by his department in relation to Tusla to ensure it was getting the results it was seeking to achieve. Funding is also included to establish a dedicated intervention team to provide additional support in situations where urgent improvement is required.

Money has also been allocated for the “full year” delivery of a national out-of-hours social work service to An Garda Síochána.

The additional €38m took account of the full year cost of service pressures which Tusla had to respond to this year, including significant cost increases in caring for a growing number of children in foster care and residential care services.

There has been a significant increase in the number of referrals over the last few years and this is expected to continue in the coming years.

As of July this year, 7% of all children in care did not have a dedicated social worker allocated to their case.

However, Dr Reilly said these children would not be considered to be high risk.

An extra €1.1m has been allocated to Tusla to protect and improve access to adoption records.