A report from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found services provided by Tusla in the Dublin South West and Kildare/West Wicklow areas are dealing with a 'chronic shortfall' of staff.
Hiqamonitors Tusla’s performance against national standards and advises the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and Tusla.
In both services, Hiqa found inadequate resources in place to meet the demands of the service and the needs of children.
As a result, they are both focused on providing an emergency response to those at highest risk or addressing basic care needs such as providing accommodation and, as a consequence, not all children’s needs were assessed or met in a timely manner.
Hiqa carried out a risk-based inspection of the child protection and welfare services in the Dublin South West and Kildare/West Wicklow service area in April 2023.
There was a high number of children referred to the child protection and welfare service who did not have an allocated social worker.
The provider had given assurances to the chief inspector that the risks associated with this were being managed and the purpose of the inspection was to validate these assurances.
The service was found to be non-compliant with all three standards assessed against.
Hiqa found there was a chronic shortfall in staffing resources to meet the demands of the service.
There were gaps in the monitoring and oversight of waitlisted cases, including the completion of safety planning.
Prolonged periods
Many children and families were waiting prolonged periods for preliminary enquiries and initial assessments to take place.
There were clearly defined governance arrangements and lines of accountability in the area and management was attempting to mitigate the risks in the area.
However, they faced many competing demands and were required to prioritise risks within their existing resources. As a result, the area management was unable to direct adequate resources for the care and protection of all children.
Overall, the quality and safety of the child protection and welfare service required significant improvement to ensure it met the needs of all children and their families who required the service.
They said there was an unacceptably long wait time for preliminary enquiries to take place, especially for cases prioritised as low or medium risk at screening.
The purpose of preliminary enquiries is to gain further information in order to determine what action is required to address the needs of and risks to the child.
As enquiries did not take place in a timely fashion, the risk to these children was largely unknown.
This meant children and families were not receiving the right service at the right time, and many children remained on waitlists for extended periods without being provided with relevant supports.
Staffing challenges in 2022 resulted in a crisis response focusing primarily on the unaccompanied children’s basic care needs and accommodation, rather than on the wider ongoing child protection and welfare needs of this cohort of vulnerable children.
Despite these challenges, staff had worked hard and ensured all unaccompanied children were seen on the day of referral and provided with accommodation.
