Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): With us today, we have Colin Reid, the deputy chair, Andy McClenaghan, the campaigns officer, and John Alexander, a committee member. I offer all three of you a very warm welcome to Committee today. As you are aware, I have a specific interest in the topic. I will hand over to you before asking for questions.

Mr Colin Reid (Northern Ireland Association of Social Workers): Thank you very much for the invite on behalf of the social work profession. I am sorry that Anne McAllister, our professional officer, is unable to make it today. I hope that you will tolerate the three of us — men. I will make a few comments about the role of the Northern Ireland Association of Social Workers (NIASW), a bit about our workforce survey and some of the challenges and opportunities for the profession in the light of the Minister's 10-year vision.

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has 21,000 members in the UK employed in front-line management, academic research and positions in the care setting. We are branded as NIASW in this jurisdiction, the Scottish Association of Social Workers (SASW) in Scotland, BASW Cymru in Wales and BASW in England, but we are, in effect, the same organisation. NIASW represents the profession and deals with a lot of professional issues around awareness raising seminars, dealing with advice and representation to members, supporting staff and trying to promote good practice and ethics across our staff group. In Northern Ireland, the majority of social work staff are employed by health and social care trusts but social workers work in criminal justice, education, youth justice and the voluntary and private sectors or as independents, which is a growing area. A lot of people think that social workers deal only with children, but, in reality, we work across a raft of different groups supporting risk assessment, dealing with difficult, complex situations, empowering service users around looked-after children, physical disability, elderly care and mental health.

I will say something relating to the challenges faced by the profession. We did our survey, 'Above and Beyond'. The background was that we were approached by a number of members who were telling us that they were working a significant number of extra hours. We appreciate that all professions in health and social care work extra hours, but it is the type of extra hours they were working; often young committed social workers working many nights a week in difficult complex situations on their own in the community. We conducted a survey in 2016, which Andy led on, and we had responses from 7% of the Northern Ireland social work workforce, which we thought was a good response. We published it in September 2013 and got a lot of media coverage about this. Our research shows that 88% of social workers regularly work unpaid hours. We did some calculations and modelling with it, and it equates to 330 full-time jobs in the statutory centre and another 50 full-time posts in the voluntary sector, which produce savings of just over £11 million to the wider HSC family. Our purpose in doing the report was to find solutions, not present problems, so we adopted that approach. We made a number of recommendations, and one of them was that employers should audit and establish how many unpaid hours are being worked by the social work workforce and this should be used to inform social work workforce planning. We are really delighted that the Minister has indicated she is going to do that; we think that that is a big positive.

On staff vacancies, 51% of social workers in the statutory sector and 40% in the voluntary sector have at least one vacancy in their team. You can imagine the impact that can have on other members. There are a number of reasons why it is the case, such as insufficient funding in HSC trusts to deal with posts where there is maternity leave and sick leave. Some vacancy controls are still in place in adult services; they are not in children's services. Employers have told us that in trusts recruitment is now administered by the Business Services Organisation (BSO), but this has had the knock-on effect of actually bringing in significant delay to recruitment. It has actually forced front-line managers and managers to take on the burden of recruitment which adds to their difficulties. I think that the Minister indicated in a response to a question for oral answer yesterday that she wants recruitment done in a timely fashion, which is positive.

Unnecessary and duplicate bureaucracy is a theme in up-to-date and previous research by NIASW. We are not anti-bureaucracy; bureaucracy is part of good social work practice in protecting the public. For analysis, you need good bureaucracy. That is not the issue. It is just that we are facing increased levels of bureaucracy, which are getting in the way of the relationship with our service users. In our survey, 44% considered the burden of paperwork and lack of administrative support as the biggest challenge that they faced.

The social work strategy innovation scheme has supported a number of pilot projects. We are very supportive of the social work strategy. We make recommendations about taking a whole-systems approach to tackling unnecessary bureaucracy, and a necessary focus on IT, which is one of the big challenges for social work. We are a profession that does not need a lot of IT, but some social workers do not have access to their own computer as yet. There are lots of IT solutions that could make people's lives a lot easier and produce better services.

Across all programmes of care, social workers are highlighting the growing complexity of cases. We had discussions with the executive directors of social work, and we will explore why we are seeing increasing complexity. There are issues around demographics and there are emerging issues. My background is in family and childcare and we are seeing issues around Internet safety and separated and trafficked children. A whole lot of new things are complicated to negotiate your way around.

We have made a recommendation about the use of a caseload weighting tool and to roll it out regionally across all programmes of care. This is used in some programmes of care. It is a useful tool to help social workers to manage their caseloads.

We very much welcome the Minister's vision. We thought that it was innovative. We made representations to Professor Bengoa's report. We recognise it as an innovative document, although we had concerns about its scope. We see the Minister's vision as an opportunity for positive change. To be clear, the social work profession is up for change, as it was with Transforming Your Care. We welcome the focus on prevention, early intervention, and supporting independence and well-being. The vision commits to the concept of co-production of services, which is well-embedded in social work.

The most interesting concept relates to primary care. We welcome the commitment to enhance primary care, although more information is needed. Some re-engineering of existing services may be possible, particularly where you have big collectives of GPs co-located with social services. As a profession, we think it might need investment to ensure that we do not simply move things around that will probably create a new level of demand. There is, perhaps, a role for generalist social work in certain contexts working with GPs.

We made representation to Professor Bengoa about the lack of representation of social work on his review panel. That concerned the profession greatly. It is interesting that if you are reforming health and social care, you cannot do it without social services. Professor Bengoa did ensure that two social work representatives were placed on his panel as advisers, which we appreciated. The message we want to give out is that we want to see social work represented on an equal footing with medicine and nursing in the transformation oversight structure.

We are positive about the improvement institute and the Health and Social Care-wide leadership strategy. In both those concepts, social work will play its full part. We particularly welcome the forthcoming review of adult social care and support. I do not think there is a bigger and more challenging public policy agenda item than this. You cannot turn on your television at night without seeing this being played out, particularly around the NHS in England, and some of the pressures involved. There are many parallels for us. The Northern Ireland Audit Office recently reported on the impacts on the Health and Social Care system resulting from patients being admitted to hospital as emergencies and later facing unnecessary delays in their discharge, and the problems in securing appropriate care packages. The Care Quality Commission in England has put the cost of bed-blocking at £800 million annually. It described the NHS in England as being at tipping point. We would like to be involved in the reform of adult social care as much as possible. Social work has an important contribution to make to that.

I now turn to the workforce strategy. We welcome the Minister's commitment to a workforce strategy. I highlight the fact that 20% of the social work workforce is over 55. We have had issues with agency pay. There are some challenges or opportunities with getting older qualified people back into the workforce again, which we would like to see happen.

We mentioned bureaucracy. We were pleased to see the Minister's report heavily mention bureaucracy, and there are some really good opportunities to make things better.

We totally support the Minister's focus on mental health. In any of the programmes of care or client groups that we work with, mental health problems are to the fore and anything that can be done to improve mental health services to clients and patients is to be welcomed. We should have mental health on the same priority footing as acute care.

Finally, the future structure of functions delivered by the Health and Social Care Board was not in the Minister's vision as such — it was largely silent on this — but, from a social work perspective, we felt that the Health and Social Care Board worked very well indeed. It performed important governance, leadership and commissioning roles, and we would not like to see those lost or, indeed, those functions brought into central government, where the machinery of government processes might get in the way. In any future structure, we would certainly like to see a remodelled Public Health Agency with a strong social work presence.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): Thank you, Colin. I am rather disheartened to know that, in the five years since I worked in the system, not a lot has changed when it comes to the likes of bureaucracy. I know it all too well; I know the amount of form-filling and recording — I know that recording is essential and has to happen — that takes place in social work. I shared an office with 10 others, and we had maybe two computers for all those people. It is sad to hear that not even our IT systems have progressed. I know that we had to log on to several IT systems — I do not know whether that is still the case — depending on which area of social work you were in. You had your social work IT system and then you had the IT system of wherever you were working from. That added to the pressures of everyday working life. I am still in contact with my colleagues from Antrim Area Hospital and I know the pressures that they are under.

I am delighted that you are here today. I agree with you completely. Social care is not just an add-on when we talk about the transformation of health and social care; it is a major part of the transformation. I do not think that anyone is better placed to be part of that transformation than those who work in social work. I sincerely hope that that is taken into account.

You spoke about the Minister's vision. I know that social work was placed quite highly in the Minister's statement to the House although I know that you have concerns about certain parts of that. I know, maybe better than most in this room given my background, the differences when it comes to multidisciplinary team working in primary care settings and the differences in the roles of a social worker. I also know about the need for supervision and for that back-up and the need to be part of a social work team as well. How do you see all that working? At the minute, we have — you can correct me if I am wrong — a mental health team, an adults with learning difficulties team, a hospital social work team and a mental health and older people team. How do you see that working if there is a move to a primary care model hub where there is a mixed workload?

Mr Reid: I think that the profession is up for change. As you know, you do not get into social work if you are not innovative in finding solutions — sometimes, imperfect solutions — to very difficult problems; that is the nature of the business. It would be wrong to characterise from your own time in practice that we have not had movement. We have got the social work strategy. What we are seeing is a range of innovation projects and a range of steps being taken to try to reduce bureaucracy, but I think it will take some time to bed in. Our report has been helpful in that, after it was received by the Department and employers and we then met them, they agreed that we need to do some things together. The challenge is in upskilling, communicating, making these things happen and bringing difference to the ground. An evaluation was done on the social work strategy with staff, and some front-line staff said that they were not really aware of what was happening. So, there are some challenges, but it would not be right to say that nothing has happened. The challenge for us, with a finite amount of resources, is to scale these solutions up and make them happen. We are on a journey.

In terms of teams, we are well used to a skill mix and working with lots of different disciplines in different settings. The social work profession is up for those challenges; we want to see change in Northern Ireland and see systems working better here, but we want to be part of that change and ensure that our concerns are addressed as well.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): Turning to your 'Above and Beyond' survey, I was delighted to be part of its launch here a few months ago. I read about the extra hours that social workers do. As you said, all people across the piece in healthcare work over and above what they are contracted to but, for a social worker, the work can be very complex. They can be working on their own and can be put into situations that, at times, are unnerving and quite dangerous. I am often asked about this job, how stressful it is and the hours that I work, and I always say, "This job is not comparable when it comes to workload and stress that I experienced in social work." So, I have concerns over that. What is the morale like in general within social work?

Mr Reid: The morale in social work is good in general. People have been very honest in flagging up what they want to change. The environment is challenging for us, but social workers want to be involved in system change. Maybe one of the best ways of ensuring morale is high is to ensure that social work is included in any system change and that social workers feel part of it from a bottom-up perspective.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): I will certainly lobby for that.

Mr Andy McClenaghan (Northern Ireland Association of Social Workers): In relation to the issue of unpaid hours, the 'Above and Beyond' report says that 88% of social workers are working additional unpaid hours on a regular basis. In 2012, NIASW produced a report entitled, 'Social Work Not Paperwork', which Colin mentioned in his introduction. That looked specifically at bureaucracy in children's services and found that 76% of social workers were working additional unpaid hours. In the last four years, that figure has increased. The 'Above and Beyond' report states that 88% of staff overall work hours above and beyond, but if you break that down into children's services and adult services, 93% of children's services social workers report that they are working unpaid hours. So, things certainly are not getting better. Bureaucracy is the biggest factor in social workers having to do those additional hours.

One of the things we were very keen to stress is that social work is a relational profession. A lot of what social workers do involves building relationships with their service users. For example, a family support social worker will spend a lot of time working with parents and children. That time is essential, and if social workers are feeling pressured to do unnecessary and duplicative bureaucracy, that is taking time away from building those relationships, which is not a good thing. We want to make sure that social workers are freed up. The Minister's vision talks about finding IT solutions in order to, "liberate time for care". That is something we would be very supportive of.

In terms of the social work strategy that Colin mentioned, there have been a number of pilot projects, some of which have been very successful. They have looked at different approaches to reducing bureaucracy. The Newtownabbey early intervention pilot has been taken forward in the Northern Trust area. They have introduced a unit coordinator whose focus is on reducing bureaucracy, and they have looked at going to a paperless system and brought in e-solutions whereby all staff have smartphones so that they can email without having to go back to the office. Those measures have had a significant impact on results, with a reduction in staff turnover in the team. An increase in morale, although not quantified, has been reported, and they have seen a reduction in staff sick leave, which can be quantified. So, where bureaucracy is streamlined and taken out of the system, social workers are more able to do their jobs well and service users benefit.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): I am encouraged by that, because I remember when health and social care were two completely separate entities. I remember working in a hospital at the time, and it was like a them-and-us situation. Once things came together and the trusts amalgamated, there was a much smoother way of working. That gave social workers the status that they should have had all along. I still felt, though, for a number of years that social care was still seen slightly as the poor relation. Health always took priority. It is good to see that advances are being made to assist these professional people in their jobs. I am encouraged by that.

I am aware of the time and a couple of members want to come in. Gerry, do you want to go ahead? We want to break shortly.

Mr Carroll: I have two quick questions. Obviously, the figure on unpaid hours is quite high. You said that 88% of social workers are doing unpaid hours. The report says that a survey is being done by employers to assess how much unpaid work is being done and how much that costs. Yesterday, teachers were out on strike, not just about pay but about working conditions and stress at work. I know that you are not a union as such, but has there been any action or discussion about action internally in your organisation? Andy, I met you in the summer and you gave me an example about the paperwork. Correct me if I am wrong, but you said that, if a member of staff gets assaulted or attacked, they have to fill out something like 10 bits of paper. Could you comment on that? You talk about bureaucracy, but how bad is the recording process and how much duplication is there?

Mr McClenaghan: I will start with the last question. Gerry, it was the example used in 'Above and Beyond' of a social worker working in the residential team with looked-after children. The example that we used was about an incident involving a child lashing out. The social worker reported having to fill out 14 pieces of paperwork as a result of that incident, so that has a very significant impact on their time to actually work with the child. I will pass over to John and Colin to talk about that in a bit more detail.

The other question was about action. Yes, we are not a union. We have been very keen to stress in all our work around 'Above and Beyond' that demand is being met, services are being provided and children are being looked after. Older people, when they are discharged from hospital, are having care packages put together. Services are being provided, demand is being met and the public are not at risk, but we are concerned about the long-term impact on social workers, if they are working additional hours, and about their emotional well-being in terms of stress and staff burnout. All those issues need to be considered. While services are being delivered at the moment, we want to make sure that, down the line, they continue to be delivered well and that staff are supported. There is no talk of any action in terms of staffing, but we want to make sure that we do not get to a point where staff feel that they are getting desperate.

Mr Reid: We have had to take the employers to task on agency pay. We were very concerned when some agency staff approached us. I understand why employers use agency staff, but we discovered that some agency staff had been paid at the minimum wage — they are qualified social workers — outwith Agenda for Change. We were very concerned about that. That has now stopped.

Mr Carroll: How many people did that affect?

Mr Reid: I would need to double-check the numbers. There were certainly a number of people receiving the minimum wage. That has now stopped. We still have an issue with agency pay in that we have discovered that social workers are being placed at the first point in the band whereas other professions are placed on a different point on the band. That gives entirely the wrong message. Is it counterproductive because it facilitates churn? If people want to work through agency work, that is fine, but we want them to work for as long as possible and want to minimise churn. If they are simply trying to get a full-time job and move on, we do not think that is very sensible, so we have made representations to BSO about that.

Mr John Alexander (Northern Ireland Association of Social Workers): Our approach to action in support of front-line staff who are under pressure is to work with employers. We have had a very positive response from executive directors of social work who have said that the findings of our report concur with their anecdotal evidence of how things are in trusts, and they are very positive and very keen to work with us to find constructive solutions. We want to go down that kind of path rather than look at taking more direct action, such as withdrawal of services or withdrawal of labour. As a professional association, that —

Mr Carroll: You could do that, but it is maybe for down the line.

Mr Alexander: It would not be the professional association's approach to that. It might come up through trade union routes or other routes but, at the moment, we are finding very constructive and positive responses from employers to deal with some of those challenges. We need to work with them to deliver those solutions and take things forward on that basis.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): Members, as we discussed earlier, we will break for a short adjournment.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): Robbie is next on the list to ask a question.

Mr Butler: I have two things, and they have already been well covered. I enjoyed reading above and beyond the document that was produced. Lessons can be learned. It is great leverage to use when quantifying and qualifying what is going on. I see what Liz Black, a social worker who is involved with my family with regard to fostering, does over and above what is expected. It is absolutely fantastic. What will the risks be if the Department does not engage with social workers in the full development of a workforce strategy, especially given the quantified statistics detailed in that document?

Mr Reid: I will ask John to answer that, because of his experience from Dumfries and Galloway.

Mr Alexander: You have touched on a very important point, Robbie. The challenge that faces the whole health and social care system is major. You cannot implement transformational change from the top down. A Minister, Department of Health and senior directors cannot initiate a strategy and expect it to happen; it has to be owned by the professionals who, day to day, do the important things that you highlighted in your preamble. If the social work profession and — I will go beyond that — the allied health professions are not fully engaged at the front line in the transformation agenda, it will not happen. There will be lip service to some changes and an attempt will be made to move things forward, but, ultimately, it will not get us to where we need to be. It has to be a hearts and minds effort with professionals.

A couple of months ago, I had the privilege of going round on a number of roadshows that we were having with front-line colleagues across the length and breadth of Northern Ireland. I was extremely heartened to hear the positive ideas that people had. They were not there just to moan and groan about the challenges. They certainly told us about the challenges, but they quickly moved on to say, "If only this or that could be done. We know that we can do it. With a nod to say, 'You've got the power; go ahead and do it', we could make things so much better". I do not think you can transform the system without the key front-line players. I will go further than that: without engaging with the people who benefit from our services in local communities to get the change that you need, you have to get local communities and local people on board with the change and put them at the heart of it. I know that that is something that Professor Bengoa has highlighted as an important aspect of change.

Mr Butler: Thank you for that. I have been reading through the briefing document. Paragraph 3.18 talks about acute care in the community. That will be a pressure point going forward. I appreciate your honesty. At the minute we are coping, but, if we transform care and have people living for longer at home, we will, as it says in paragraph 3.18, have to have social workers based in the community to provide the same care as is currently provided by those based in the hospital, if we are serious about empowering people and providing good healthcare for them.

I have one other point; it will not take too long. Bureaucracy is something that I have never enjoyed. I do not like paperwork in any form or function; in fact, it is one of the things that almost put me off fostering. Again, Liz, my social worker, was fantastic. I probably doubled her workload because she ended up having to help me and make sure that I did it, which did not help. You have documented the fact that contemporaneous notes have to be made outside of work hours and stuff, and you talked about IT as one of the solutions. I believe that social services lost admin staff a number of years ago who perhaps might have fulfilled that function. Is there a business case for a restoration of that function? It was well explained to me, so I understand the need for the recording mechanism. I understand about the vulnerability not only of the young people or the people in care but of the provider — for instance, me — but it was still too much. It really was too much. Apart from the IT solution, is there anything else that could be done in the short term to alleviate that?

Mr Reid: I think that it has been helpful that we have had good discussions both with employers and with the Department about our report. Thank you for comments about this. We are very pleased with this, and it will act as a model for other jurisdictions in the UK for how they approach a similar issue. There are lots of opportunities to make things better. You mentioned looked-after children: you will know, Robbie, that these things happen. I give you a scenario where a single parent with four children becomes unwell and needs to go into hospital for an operation and has no relatives to look after her children. The children would need to be accommodated on a voluntary basis for three or four days. Potentially, six forms need to be completed for each child. I am not saying that they need to be completed in every case, but that gives you an illustration of the bureaucracy. You could be doing this on a Friday night. There are probably better ways in which we can work.

As I said, we have had a helpful discussion with the Department. Christine Smyth, who leads up on this, has indicated to us that, from the Department's perspective, if there is robust evidence for legislative change or for relaxing legislative requirements, they will look at that. There is a case around short breaks for respite that might work very well. They are also indicating that the Department will scale up regional initiatives that work, which we are pleased about. She has indicated that the Health and Social Care Board will lead on a review of delegated statutory functions from an information-gathering point of view. There is a lot of information that is gathered in different ways, and one of the interesting things that our members have told us is that, at trust level, sometimes trusts gather information as well. We are on a journey in all of this, and there are things that we can do. We just need to get better about scaling up, informing and taking initiatives to make a difference.

Mr McClenaghan: On the workforce planning and admin point, Robbie, we need a workforce planning strategy for social work. The findings on additional hours worked in 'Above and Beyond' make that very clear. Yes, there is a need for admin staff and support, and that will tie in with the workforce strategy. The Minister has announced that she plans to take forward an HSC-wide workforce strategy, and we are very supportive of that. To bring in additional admin support, you need to streamline the system and identify where bureaucracy is duplicative and get that out first. Then you look at how you can bring IT solutions to assist staff to work more productively, and, thirdly, you bring in the admin support staff. It is a bit like the issue that has been talked about in different evidence sessions: just throwing money at waiting lists will not solve the problem when there is a bigger problem in the system. Bringing in admin staff alone will not sort out the problem; it is admin support. Find where the system is broken and duplicative, take that out, find solutions with IT and then bring in the admin staff to support. That would be our approach.

Mr Butler: That is the right answer, Chair. Thank you.

Ms Seeley: Thank you for being here today. I have had the pleasure of meeting Colin and Andy on a number of occasions. I have not yet met you, John, but you are welcome here today. Obviously, we have discussed at length the many issues that you have discussed with us today, so I will not ask too many questions. First, I put on record my thanks to both of you for the lobbying that you have been doing and for the work that you have been doing on increasing awareness and our knowledge. I also commend the sterling work of social workers. As a teacher, I engage with social workers and the work that they do, as you said, around the clock and at the drop of a hat putting children first and before themselves. That work is well worth commending, so I put that on the record.

Obviously, one of the big issues is around the number of staff working an immense amount of overtime. I am trying to get our heads around why that is. Are we not training enough? Are there barriers to people getting into the system? Is it a wee bit of both? What is the solution? I know that our social workers need to be on the ground much more, and I know about and understand the issue with bureaucracy. How can we ensure that we have enough to ensure that children and adults who are in need get that social care?

Mr Reid: We have posed a number of solutions to that, and we have talked about some of them. It is probably a combination of a lot of things. We have a bit of work to do to understand why cases are becoming more complex and how that feeds into people's casework. What we have said is that, if we can do some stuff in IT, if we can sort out workforce vacancies much more efficiently and if we can deal with some of the bureaucratic things, that will free up social work staff time.

I will give you one example. Paul Frew recently asked a question about article 4 welfare reports. This is private law stuff in the courts. Social workers act as court officers to help resolve family problems. I was astounded when the Minister indicated that there were probably just under 1,000 requests every year. Now the reports are on a spectrum: some are quite straightforward; others are highly complicated. However, they all require a huge amount of time. If we did something to re-engineer the system around alternative dispute resolution and mediation — we are having a discussion about that — we could take a number of those cases out of the system. When they need to be dealt with by social services, it is absolutely right that they should be. However, if we took out 30% of those cases, we would free up a considerable amount of capacity. We spend very little money on conciliation services at the moment. If we did something on that, it would have a big impact on social work.

Mr McClenaghan: Another big issue is vacancies. 'Above and Beyond' found that 50% of social workers reported at least one vacancy in their team. It is not necessarily about creating new posts; we need to fill posts that are already there but are vacant. That is a big problem. Social work has a predominantly female workforce, so a lot of maternity covers come up that are often not filled on a like-for-like basis: a part-time member of staff might fill in for a full-time member of staff. That has knock-on effects on the workload and hours of all the other staff.

Ms Seeley: Just one more quick question. I have engaged out in the community on the fact that there are a lot more boys in care than girls. I recently asked a question about what specific training we give social workers to understand boys and how they deal with emotions. They deal with emotions very differently from girls, and it is often harder to drag their emotions out. Is there any specific training for that, or do we just leave it to the goodwill of the social worker?

Mr Reid: Gosh, you have posed a very interesting question, the answer to which I am not sure of. You are correct in the sense that boys are different from girls. If I put my Childline hat on, many more girls than boys contact us. One of the big challenges is to encourage boys to talk about their problems. One of the interesting things is that since Childline's calls have largely gone online, the ratio of girls to boys has dramatically decreased. That is something to do with how you engage young men. You have made a fair point, and there are demographic changes in how we approach things. It is an ever-evolving field. The subjects that I studied before I qualified in social work 29 years ago are probably very different from the challenges that front-line staff face today.

Ms Seeley: I appreciate that, thank you.

Mr Middleton: I just want to put on record my thanks. I was able to take part in the social worker for a day scheme in my area, and I found it very useful. I was exhausted at the end of it.

Mr Reid: Good.

Mr Middleton: I saw the wide range of roles that social workers undertake, and I saw at first hand the pressures that they were under but also their good spirits and their willingness to come out of annual leave to take young people who had come into care on days out. These are things that may go unnoticed by wider society, but certainly we recognise the valuable work they do. I would just like to put on record our support and thanks for the continued engagement. I have met Andy five or six times and possibly other MLAs are the same. We are aware of the issues, and, if there is anything that we can do to support you, we will strive to do it.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): I want to ask a couple of questions about recruitment. You mentioned the Business Services Organisation. I hope that I am not going to hear anything about regional lists for social workers.

Mr Reid: No. There is a regional recruitment process, and employers have said to us that it is tricky to negotiate. It pushes the responsibility for e-recruitment on to first-line managers and above, and they are forced to turn to locums because it takes so long. The Minister indicated in a question for written answer that she wanted to see timely recruitment, and, hopefully, solutions will be found to speed things up and ensure timely recruitment. That in itself would radically help staff with additional hours, because they often cover for illness and sickness.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): Just another quick question. Did you say that 50% of teams have reported vacancies?

Mr McClenaghan: At least one vacancy.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): You talked a bit about vacancy control. Are there moratoriums on any of those vacancies? Do you know?

Mr McClenaghan: We understand that there are no vacancy controls in children's services across the trusts.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): But in everything else.

Mr McClenaghan: I am not 100% sure.

The Chairperson (Ms P Bradley): Maybe we could find that out, or you could find it out and go through us. I know what is it like. We all know what it is like from any job that we have worked in: if there are vacancies, there are most definitely added pressures on those teams. Those teams still have annual leave to take. They still have levels of sickness and other issues. It would be interesting to find out about the vacancy controls.

I thank you very much. I am delighted to have had you here. I am glad that social work has got a good airing at the Committee, and I will continue to consult you on the role of social work going forward in the transformation of social care. Thank you for your patience.

Mr Reid: We thank you and all the members for your interest in social work and the ongoing dialogue that we have had.