Social workers ‘at breaking point’, Trust meeting hears

The trade union official stated: “We’ve had a series of industrial actions ongoing for a while, and today was just the pinnacle of it, where they felt that they could go no further, and they needed to make a stand, because they felt that their voices were not being heard.

“Ask any of the social workers, they will tell you harrowing stories of what it is that they’re experiencing, not just the environments that they’re walking into and households that are broken, but the pressures that they’re coming under.

“We’ve been told that in one instance, there’s a work area where there’s meant to be [a team] of 20 to 24 people, [yet] there’s 13 people covering that post. That is really difficult for my members. Where can one person physically do the job of two people? It is literally impossible.

“And what’s happening is that my members hit their breaking point. They’re going to end up going off sick. We’re just going around in a vicious circle where work is being passed from one team to another.

“The work is just being shifted from here to here, and there’s no proper acknowledgement given from the Trust management, because there’s not enough being done to retain the staff that’s come through.”

Director of Children and Young People’s Services, Colm McCafferty, explained that he was all too aware of the issues being faced by social workers working with children.

Mr McCafferty, who is also the executive director of Social Work, commented: “I absolutely understand why members have embarked on industrial action. We are a border-facing Trust. We have always experienced more challenges around recruiting staff for that reason.

“The difficulties that we have are reflected in the fact that, as of today, we have 52 unallocated looked-after children. We have approximately 170 children with disability who don’t have an aligned social worker at this moment in time, and we have a number of unallocated cases, both within our Gateway service and our Family Support Service.

“If anybody is aware of a child protection situation that has not been responded to, make sure you bring that to our attention.”

Trust chief executive, Steve Spoerry acknowledged the sincerity of the protesters and the difficulties they are facing, however he commended the Trust for being proactive in training new staff: “It does come across that you’re concerned about your colleagues and you’re concerned about the children. It’s a dispute motivated by sincere and professional concerns, and that comes through.

“The concern about the lack of numbers, fundamentally that’s a lack of numbers being trained and retained, because Northern Ireland is a pretty self-contained labour market.

“I do want to commend Colm, because certainly in the report he presented here, he is being frank about the issues that we face.

“This Trust has done well in recruiting newly-qualified social workers recently. They, of course, require professional supervision and development in their early years, they’re professionals in managing high risk, complex situations, and that puts a load on experienced staff.

“But nonetheless, we have to start somewhere in building numbers back up, and individuals have to start somewhere in terms of their career. So I hope that we can work together to develop those people and encourage them to stay, as they join us. That will be good for all of us.

“I also want to highlight the success of the Southern Trust in terms of providing fostering placements, and making sure that we don’t have to put children into care, which is encouraging in terms of our ability to provide a stable environment.

“So there is some good work being done here and there are some real challenges. I accept the reality of those challenges. I want you to know in terms of the labour market, supply issues, my colleagues are taking that seriously.”

Chair of the Southern HSC Trust board, Eileen Mullan sympathised with the Nipsa members and wished them well: “I’m sorry that you have to do this. You want to do your job, you want to look after your patients, you want to look after your young people every day, and the shortage of our workforce is just crippling our services. I acknowledge that fully.

“So I hope negotiations go well and that this is resolved for everybody’s sake. I suspect it’s a long road to get the complement of staff that is truly needed in Northern Ireland to support these services, but I thank you for being with us today.”