Tusla says 500 new social workers required every year amid staffing issues

Vivienne Clarke

The interim chief executive of Tusla Kate Duggan has said the number of social workers graduating needs to rise from 200 to 500 per year.

“We have a supply issue in Ireland with the number of social workers that are qualifying from third level universities this year,” Ms Duggan told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.

“I understand there's approximately 220 social workers graduating this year, 163 of those have been offered a permanent job in Tusla. We estimate that around 500 social workers need to be qualified every year to serve the requirement for that profession across sectors in Ireland.”

When asked how many social workers Tusla needs now, Ms Duggan said they would need 200 additional social workers to provide the services they would like.

We recognise that children and families deserve better.

Tusla’s annual report for 2022, which was published today, has seen a 13 per cent increase in the number of referrals made to the agency in 2022 compared to 2021, up 19 percent on 2020. That breaks down to 227 referrals a day in 2022.

All referrals require a screening to determine if a child is in immediate risk of harm and to do that requires a referral to a social worker, explained Ms Duggan.

“We certainly are challenged in of the timeliness of the response that we have in relation to particularly family services. But what we are seeing is an unprecedented demand and that is causing the challenge that we're facing.

“We need investment. We need additional investment where we've seen an increase in referrals to our service, a significant increase in demand for services. We do need the investment to scale that and that is investment in of replacement capacity. It's investment for the community voluntary sector, it's further investment in the welfare and services and certainly a further investment in the wider therapeutic mental health disability services.

“What we want to see is children coming into care who need to come into care, receiving a high quality and timely service. But we also want to be able to better children to remain at home and whether they need particular therapeutic services or their families and parents need s in relation to perhaps addiction or mental health, that those s are there. What all of us want is that we keep children with their families, we keep family units in place as well.

“I think we can continuously improve. I think we recognise that services can be better. We recognise that children and families deserve better. But we also need to acknowledge the good work that's been done and the significant efforts that are being made to improve services.”