1,700 children waiting for social work services

More than 1,700 children are waiting for social work services because of a shortage of qualified staff.

The Minister for Children, Ms Hanafin, has announced new measures to address the shortages including the creation of a career structure to aid the retention of skilled staff and boost recruitment.

An extra 68 social worker training posts will be phased in from October 2001 and will run for four years.

The Minister added that 250 senior social worker grades were being created to give support to new qualified staff.

"The situation facing children who are assessed as non-emergency cases is that, due to shortages of qualified staff and resulting heavy caseloads on existing staff, they may have to wait for the allocation of a social worker to their cases", the Minister said.