CHILDREN COULD be placed at risk if the Health Service Executive moves ahead with a new standardised system designed to transform how social workers handle child protection issues, the Irish Association of Social Workers has said.
It has also warned there is a “crisis under way” in child protection services in Ireland with many social workers “feeling constantly overstretched by high caseloads”.
At its annual conference in Dublin yesterday, the association published a report outlining its opposition to the executive’s proposed new business process standardisation project, which it said would force social workers to spend up to 80 per cent of their time filling in forms at their desks.
The new system would commit social workers to following a set of standard procedures in how they deal with child protection matters regardless of where in the country they are working. They would also have to fill in a standard form in an effort to provide comparable data in all areas of the country.
The association said the new system, which is due to be introduced in Dublin in coming weeks, is a “carbon copy” of the integrated children’s system in Britain.
It said this system was heavily criticised in the wake of the “Baby P” tragedy, which involved a 17-month-old who died of injuries suffered over a period when he was seen by social workers and health professionals.
“Fundamentally the concern is that, as had taken place in the UK, the increasing level of regulation will lead to front-line social workers feeling obliged to do everything by the book rather than use their professional judgment,” the report said.
The social work task force set up in the wake of the death of Baby P recommended the first priority of the British government should be the scaling back of this flawed model, the added.
Prof Sue White, who served on the task force in Britain, told the conference that the proposed system would trap social workers in form filling, expose them to new arenas of blame and reduce vital “face time” with children and families.
“If you look at the case of Baby P all the paperwork was fine but you still had an extremely awful child death so what it doesn’t do is keep a child safe,” she said.
The HSE said it would continue to consult front-line staff on the new system but stressed that accurate data plays an important part in protecting children and supporting families.