Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr McGuigan): We have Ms Rhoda McBride, interim deputy executive director of social work in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust; Mr Colm McCafferty, director of children's services in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust; Ms Deborah Hanlon, head of service for adult safeguarding in the Southern Trust; Professor Lorna Montgomery, professor of social work in the British Association of Social Workers (BASW); and Dr Jane Shears, national director in the North of the British Association of Social Workers. You are all very welcome. I will hand over to you for some introductory remarks, and then we will take members' questions.

Ms Rhoda McBride (Belfast Health and Social Care Trust): I am happy to start. I am the deputy executive director of social work in the Belfast Trust. Chair and members, it is great to be able to come along today to present, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to the Committee on behalf of the Belfast Trust.

We really welcome the Adult Protection Bill because, up to now, we have been working in accordance with adult safeguarding policies and procedures, and the Bill will put those on a statutory footing. The Bill, alongside the statutory guidance, will strengthen adult protection and lead to greater consistency and awareness, which we welcome. We certainly embrace the principles, because those are core social work values that we all hold dear, in that we put the service user at the centre of our decision-making and act in their best interests and in accordance with their wishes and feelings. That being said, the Bill provides significant powers for us to intervene when it is appropriate and necessary to do so in order to safeguard individuals.

We outlined a number of issues in our submission. You will be pleased to know that I will not go through them all, but I will highlight three particular issues, if that is OK. The first area relates to resources. The Bill creates additional duties and powers for social workers in the trusts, including the need to seek court orders, which will require additional resources and legal advice. We will also have to prepare reports for court and attend court, and there are clearly cost implications from that. In addition, other services will be impacted on by the Bill, such as the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, the directorate of legal services and the police. As you know, they are already experiencing significant resource pressures, so it is really important that we work collaboratively with other agencies. The Bill therefore means that we will need additional social work staff. In order to undertake the duties to a competent standard, we will also require additional training. Year on year, the trust has had a steady increase in referrals. Those referrals have become more complex in nature, and demand is exceeding capacity. There has been underfunding in that area. We therefore stress the point that we need additional resources before we move forward.

The second area is independent advocates, which we are pleased to see provision for in the Bill. I know that that was enshrined in the Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016, but, sadly, it has not been implemented. In our feedback, we outlined the need for independent advocates. They need to be truly independent from the trust, to be sufficiently funded and to get adequate training, and supervisory arrangements need to be put in place for them. We also need to be able to access them when required, which is 24/7 in the event of emergencies.

The third area that is of particular significance to the Belfast Trust is CCTV. I have been a lead in safeguarding, and I have extensive experience of the role that CCTV plays, particularly in the Muckamore investigation. As you all know, without the existence of CCTV, it is likely that the abuse would never have been uncovered, because, in Muckamore, we have service users who not only lack capacity but have limited communication skills, and they are therefore unable to report abuse. CCTV has proved to be a really useful tool in our investigation in Belfast, and it provides really good evidence for court proceedings. Some families have been at the forefront of advocating strongly for CCTV. They say that it offers transparency to them and that they feel reassured by the presence of CCTV. It can also be a safeguard for staff, because when referrals are raised, the CCTV footage can be looked at it, and referrals can be screened in or out.

From the trust's perspective, we also recognise that CCTV interferes with human rights, especially the article 8 right to privacy and family life. However, we feel that its use can be justified if it is pursuing a legitimate purpose and is proportionate. A legitimate purpose is to prevent or protect individuals from abuse. In order to make sure that it is proportionate, it is central that robust governance arrangements are in place. That is really important, because it may be appropriate for some locations but not for every location. The purpose of CCTV being installed — where it is located, how it is stored, how long it is stored for, who can access it and the reason for accessing it — is important. CCTV is not a panacea for everything, so even with the presence of CCTV, sadly, abuse can still occur. It is a tool that we have found to be very useful, but it has to be used hand in hand with other measures such as safe staffing levels, robust care plans, adequate staff training and a culture whereby people, staff and service users feel empowered to escalate and speak up about abuse.

In our experience, CCTV is complex. Some think that if an incident lasts for five minutes, you just go in and look at it for five minutes. Our experience has been that it is resource-intensive, and with that comes additional cost. There is the time needed to view it. Also, training is required for those who view it, and there needs to be a multidisciplinary team approach. In our experience, not only did we have operational staff viewing it but we had safeguarding staff viewing it, and at times we had to bring in experts regarding the use of restrictive practices. It has to be done not in isolation but hand in hand with all those other processes.

Obviously, I am speaking on behalf of the Belfast Trust. Given developments and the use of body cams, we wondered whether the Bill might consider that to be included. We also felt it important that emergency provisions be outlined in the Bill. That is a summary of our submission.

Mr Colm McCafferty (Southern Health and Social Care Trust): I will speak from the Southern Trust perspective, so I will not cover what my colleague Rhoda has already outlined other than to say that it is absolutely consistent with my view. I am here in my capacity as executive director of social work in the Southern Trust, and I have professional responsibility for adult safeguarding. I am accompanied by Deborah Hanlon, the operational lead, who has developed considerable expertise and knowledge in recent years in adult safeguarding.

It might be helpful if I provide a bit of context with some data. The Southern Trust serves a population of about 400,000 people throughout the age range. Last year, we received just short of 1,000 adult safeguarding referrals. That works out at about three a day, so not insignificant. Approximately 30% — one in three — of those will translate into an adult safeguarding investigation and assessment. The important stat is that 50% of those referrals relate to alleged incidents in the adults' homes. That is important from the point of view of emphasising the role of communities, voluntary organisations, relatives and other interested parties in being attuned and alert to the signs, symptoms and circumstances that, unfortunately, occur with safeguarding incidents. The other 50% happen outside the home setting, which again emphasises the need to have organisations wholly attuned and then to have systems and processes in place to respond. We are fortunate in the Southern Trust in having the local adult safeguarding partnership. That is a forum of voluntary, community and statutory sectors, police, council, the trust and a broad range of voluntary and community providers, plus, critically, service user input. That meets regularly, and its remit is sharing information and good practice but also constantly looking at methods and ways to keep adult safeguarding in the public domain, because that is the only way that we will raise awareness.

Returning to the Bill, the trust provided a written submission to the Committee's consultation in September, so I am not going to get into the detail of that. Like my colleagues in the Belfast Trust, we absolutely welcome the Bill. It is important to note that we are the only jurisdiction in the region that does not have adult safeguarding on a statutory footing. Having it on a statutory footing is important, even with regard to the practicalities of clarity around agency professional responsibilities and reporting, and it solidifies the process around investigation and the authority of designated individuals and so forth. We welcome that. We welcome the focus in the proposed legislation on the best interests and the primacy. Again, you think that that is obvious, but it is important to have it enshrined in legislation for decision-making and practice. We very much welcome the inclusion of the adult in decision-making and in the assessment. Again, we may think that that is common sense, but it is important to have it enshrined in legislation so that we have an obligation to do it. I fully welcome that.

I move now to the human rights emphasis. We welcome the emphasis on the multi-agency focus — that is critical from our perspective — because it is an impossible task for any one agency to have responsibility. There absolutely has to be multidisciplinary awareness for identification and detection, but also the response. That is important. There is certainly work that we need to do. All of this is about having adequately trained staff, not just among those of us who are directly involved but across all of Health and Social Care — the statutory and voluntary and community sectors. There will be areas around the consistent application of the threshold of harm. That can be tricky, and you only get it with skilled, experienced and knowledgeable staff who are used to working the system, which, in itself, can be a challenge. Success is very much dependent on a robust plan for implementation with a continued focus on the multidisciplinary element.

Staffing will always be a challenge, but it is important to flag it up. In the Southern Trust, we have a small, highly skilled team of five social workers who are essentially responsible for the receipt, triaging and initial assessment of all referrals that come in. I provided a wee bit of data about that earlier. The service does a robust job, but, because of its smallness, it is always susceptible to minor staff absences and so forth. It is therefore important to keep that to the fore. Social work will remain the lead profession in investigation and assessment. Those of us in a leadership position have a responsibility to ensure that we are future-planning. We know from all other metrics, be that child protection or anything else, that the trajectory of adult safeguarding activity will increase, so we need to ensure that we future-plan so that we have a sufficiently robust and well-staffed organisation and teams to be able to respond to it.

There are a couple of other areas that are worth noting. We fully endorse and welcome the establishment of the independent adult protection board, and we look forward with optimism to how it progresses. It will have a significant role to play. The establishment of serious case reviews for when things, unfortunately, do not go as intended, or when there is a negative outcome, is also important. It is similar to what we have had in children's services for a number of years — a focus on learning and improving practices and so forth. We look forward to that. Rhoda has already talked about CCTV, and I totally endorse everything that she said in that regard.

In summary, we absolutely welcome the introduction of the Bill, and we look forward to working on areas around the investment that is required; staff training, as I have already talked about; and the development of statutory guidance, policies and procedures. As with any of these things, it is about how well we develop or have a culture that is built on person-centred, compassionate and dignified care across the entire system, because, ultimately, that will dictate how well we manage those who are really the most vulnerable people in our communities. Thank you for listening.

Dr Jane Shears (British Association of Social Workers (Northern Ireland)): Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Committee. Thank you very much for inviting me and Lorna here today. I am Jane Shears, the national director for Northern Ireland and Scotland at the BASW. I am also the global ethics commissioner for the International Federation of Social Workers. BASW is the largest professional association of registered social workers in the UK. We have members in Northern Ireland working across the adult statutory services, the community and voluntary sector, education, justice and academia, all of whom have a significant interest in the Adult Protection Bill.

As the professional body for social work, we welcome the introduction of the Adult Protection Bill in Northern Ireland. Our members in adult services in Northern Ireland support the statutory principles of the Bill and are in favour of a modern and compassionate safeguarding system that is based on a human rights approach and the protection of vulnerable adults. However, simply embedding those principles in law is only the starting point. For them to be effective, they need to be consistently interpreted and implemented by all the professionals who are involved. That is an enormous challenge that requires significant ring-fenced funding for extensive training and professional development across all agencies and professionals represented here today, as well as social workers.

The Bill ensures greater consistency in practice due to the legal clarity that is provided by placing adult safeguarding on a statutory footing, rather than being policy-led. However, there are significant concerns regarding its practical and ethical implementation. The Bill's potential impact on social work staff must be carefully considered. There are significant challenges in the social work and social care workforce in Northern Ireland, and further statutory responsibility as a consequence of the Adult Protection Bill, without the investment and resource to accompany it, will overburden an already stretched system. Academic research and lived experience from other UK nations demonstrates that, although statutory frameworks provide much-needed clarity and authority, they also significantly increase workload, administrative burden and demand on resources. A proactive and well-resourced approach is essential to ensure the Bill's success and to mitigate the risk of staff burnout and turnover.

The key point that we present to the Committee is that, in order to ensure that the Bill achieves its intended purpose without compromising human rights or creating an unmanageable burden on services, BASW Northern Ireland makes the following recommendations. First, there must be a proactive workforce plan. As in all other UK jurisdictions, the implementation of new and complex legislation has consistently suffered due to inadequate investment in the social care workforce. To address potential recruitment and retention issues in adult services, that workforce planning is needed now.

The second recommendation is about the role of the social worker and the balancing act. The Bill will be as effective as the social workers who implement it. There must be mandated high-quality inter-agency training on the new legal powers, the seven principles and the assessment of risk. The introduction of the Adult Safeguarding Bill needs to be supported with a training programme that incorporates taught and experiential learning to support workforce knowledge and skills when it comes to the statutory powers, roles and responsibilities, and a shared understanding of interpretation across the region. The implications for training within social work need to be considered carefully, given workforce numbers and capacity issues in adult social care.

Thirdly, there needs to be an acknowledgement of inter-agency challenges. Proactive engagement with all statutory, voluntary, private and independent sector partners is essential to ensure that there is a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities under the new legislation. Comprehensive multi-agency training is required to ensure that all professionals understand their duties under the Bill and collaborate and cooperate effectively and consistently. Furthermore, research into the public understanding of adult protection has found a significant knowledge gap in public understanding of responses and a need for a targeted awareness training programme.

Fourthly, clarity of definitions and consistency of practice: the accompanying statutory guidance must provide clear, robust and practical examples to clarify the thresholds for intervention so that it is not a catch-all for the whole of safeguarding. That guidance should be developed in close consultation with front-line social workers and experts by experience to ensure that it is clear and consistent and provides the necessary clarity for professional judgement.

Fifthly, resourcing and funding: the social work professional duty to promote social justice and ethical practice requires a commitment to equitable resourcing. BASW Northern Ireland wants to see a dedicated, ring-fenced budget to support the implementation of the Bill, thereby enabling social workers to provide a high-quality and ethically sound service. Social workers in Northern Ireland are already under immense pressure due to high caseloads, staffing shortages and a lack of resources. The Bill introduces new duties and powers that, without dedicated and substantial funding, will be impossible to implement effectively. The experience in England has shown that, without proper investment, legal duties exist but resources are insufficient to meet demand. Social workers should also be facilitated to provide consistent responses across the region. Research evidence that Lorna can expand on if you wish indicates that areas of high deprivation experience a higher rate of safeguarding referrals, both in community and residential settings, and that responses to referrals are variable across geographical areas. That research evidence must and should contribute to a determination of where social work interventions are best focused.

The Adult Protection Bill has the potential to transform adult protection for the better. Its success, however, will be predicated on a realistic and well-resourced approach that acknowledges the significant demands that it will place on the social work profession to protect vulnerable adults from harm. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr McGuigan): Thank you all. That has been very useful. I am going to pick up on where we left the last point on resource, because all of you, to varying degrees, talked about workforce issues, training, the impact that it would have on staff etc. Has there been any engagement between you and the Department on the level of resources required, and have there been any smoke signals that resource will follow the implementation of the Bill? I ask because the last thing that we want, as you have said, is a new piece of legislation that cannot be implemented because there are no staff, training or resources to implement it.

Mr McCafferty: There has been lengthy and ongoing engagement over the past three years — indeed, even longer than that — with regard to trying to map the required social work resource, particularly because we are talking primarily about social work. It is important to point out that adult safeguarding is similar to many other aspects of social work as regards demand versus capacity. There have been very significant recruitment challenges over the past number of years. It is fair to say that proactive steps have been taken around job planning, and the number of newly qualified social workers has increased by approximately 40 a year over the past three or four years. Different routes have been pursued around Open University, internal job training and so forth, but workforce will remain a challenge moving forward, and it is important to contextualise. It is not just adult safeguarding: there is an expansion in a number of areas, namely primary care and multidisciplinary teams. We are now inching towards the implementation of the Adoption and Children Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, all of which increases the statutory responsibility on social work services, including adult safeguarding.

There needs to be a continued focus on planning for the future workforce. My ask — we continue to discuss this with workforce colleagues — is that we avoid the difficulties of the past four or five years. That requires five- and 10-year planning, and it remains a challenge.

The Chairperson (Mr McGuigan): Rhoda, you spoke in detail about CCTV from your perspective, which is an experienced one, in the Belfast Trust. We are hearing positive things and some concerns about it. Can you detail any additional safeguards? You generalised about safeguards and the importance of considering who uses CCTV and when and where it is used. Do any additional specific safeguards need to be in the Bill to address concerns about the balance between rights and privacy?

Ms McBride: The Bill clearly sets out the regulatory powers that the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority would have in relation to CCTV. However, it is important for each organisation to have a robust CCTV policy. Some areas will not require CCTV, but, where service users lack capacity or have limited communication skills, it might be more appropriate. It is important, therefore, to complete an impact assessment when the CCTV policy is constructed. It is also important to define the purpose of CCTV. If that is to assist with adult safeguarding investigations, you would look at CCTV footage when an adult safeguarding referral is raised. You would not do so on a witch-hunt, looking at what staff are doing on their lunch break or what patients are doing in communal areas. It has to be very focused.

As I said, CCTV is just one tool. It has to be accompanied by a range of things — we quickly found that out with Muckamore — such as safe staffing levels and staff being suitably trained. Other robust policies and procedures need to be in place for levels of observation, for example: what determines whether somebody is put on one-to-one or two-to-one? CCTV is not a panacea, but it is a valuable tool that provides a good evidential basis for court proceedings. In the right environment, it is valuable, but, in circumstances in which people do not consent to it, if they have the ability to make informed decisions, I do not know whether it is necessarily required. You cannot make a blanket statement. Each situation has to be looked at on its own merits.

The Chairperson (Mr McGuigan): Thank you. That was useful.

Miss McAllister: Thank you very much for coming along today. I have a few questions on different elements. I will start with social work staff and placements. Yesterday, the Department said that there have been 700 new social workers since 2023. Credit where credit is due — you can take that back, Alan, to your Minister — and it is important that we have increased the number of social work placements, particularly because we knew that social work was in a difficult state. Have you heard from the trusts or, perhaps, from BASW whether there are more vacancies in adult social work than in family social work, which people know as children's social work services? Where are places being filled by the newly recruited staff? If that is in children's services rather than in adult services, that is where we are going to have problems.

Mr McCafferty: It is well recognised that the vast majority of vacancies in the past number of years have been in children's services, and that continues to be the case. I can speak for the Southern Trust, which is generally reflective of the situation. Progress has been achieved, and we have moved forward incrementally in rebuilding what was a hugely compromised service over the past number of years. Getting the additional staff is now paying dividends in that we are beginning to reduce our vacancy rate, but vacancies continue to be significant.

Some of our front-line children's social work teams are sitting with 30%-plus vacancies, and I will not be able to fill those until the next cohort of students comes out next summer. Having said that, to contextualise it, we were able to appoint 29 additional social workers in children's services, which is the highest number that we have appointed in a number of years. A smaller number have gone into adult services, because there are fewer vacancies in that area, but, in particular specialisms, that is still a challenge in adult services and children's services.

Miss McAllister: There are fewer vacancies, but that does not necessarily mean that you have what you need. Will more posts be needed because of this legislation? If the Bill is passed and has a commencement date next year of, say, September — I am not sure; I am just saying that — when would work to fill such posts need to start? When would business cases need to be approved?

Mr McCafferty: It is important to point out that the direction of travel will be an incremental introduction. I do not envisage that the Bill will be fully implemented next year, and I absolutely welcome that, because we simply would not have the workforce to do it. As I said, business cases have been developed and submitted in recent years, but we are all well versed when it comes to the financial climate, and translating a business case into boots on the ground is challenging at the minute.

Miss McAllister: Is it easier — when I say that, I do not mean that it is easy — to recruit people into adult social worker posts than into children and family services?

Mr McCafferty: Historically, that might have been the case. Some specialisms in adult services now also experience recruitment difficulties. It is fair to say that the difficulty is primarily in children's services, but I need to qualify that by saying that we need to be mindful of some specialisms in adult services as well.

Ms Deborah Hanlon (Southern Health and Social Care Trust): The role of the adult protection social worker in the Bill is not at graduate level. That needs to be factored in, which it has been in the business case that has been completed.

Miss McAllister: What does that mean, in reality, for patients?

Ms Hanlon: It is about having more experienced staff. We would expect them to have a minimum number of years' experience and the post to be at band 7.

Miss McAllister: Would the independent advocates — they would, obviously, be independent of trusts — require training by social workers despite not being social workers? I am talking about the provisions of the Bill being fulfilled in line with the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act.

Ms McBride: They would certainly require training. Social workers could provide some of that, but a whole range of professionals could provide training to them.

Miss McAllister: I am thinking about what does not have to fall to a social worker; I want to explore that a little.

Ms McBride: It is important to say that social workers are advocates in their own right. We have a primary role in advocating on behalf of our service users and our carers. The difficulty is that we may be the people who will pursue the orders, so we need independent advocates to come in: that is why that level of independence is required. It is also important for there to be supervisory arrangements for those independent advocates.

Miss McAllister: I will move on to the outworkings of the Bill, if it is passed. You mentioned intervention in case of harm or serious harm. In policy, does the definition of "harm" include harm to person and property? A number of your submissions discussed what constitutes serious harm on the property side of things. Will you expand on what that means and what the effect of that will be?

Ms Hanlon: Property refers to, for example, financial assets or people's personal belongings. That definition of property is applicable in our current operational procedures; that is normal practice.

Miss McAllister: Is it about "serious harm"?

Ms Hanlon: In our current procedures and our adult protection investigations, we apply the definition of "serious harm".

Miss McAllister: What about the Bill?

Ms Hanlon: The Bill refers to "harm", but it refers to "serious harm" in court settings.

Ms McBride: In reality, when you apply for an order, it will end up being about "serious harm". When referrals come in, we screen them and determine, using our professional judgement, what level of harm they meet. The ones in the category of serious harm go down the investigation route. I imagine that, under the Bill, those are the ones that we would pursue orders for.

Miss McAllister: Given that we are talking about depriving someone of their liberty, are there concerns about "harm" rather than "serious harm" being the term that is used in the Bill, or is there enough case law to ensure that you do not need to include that? I am just wondering how the Committee should view the wording.

Ms McBride: That is a really important point, because it could open the floodgates by being very broad. That is why we look forward to seeing the statutory guidance, because, I imagine, it will put meat on the bones of some of the issues that you have raised and give us direction on how to take those things forward.

When we take something to court, we have to provide significant evidence, and the court usually sets the bar quite high. Usually, there has to be significant harm before the court would consider making a production order or a banning order. I imagine that, in reality, it will be "serious harm"; hopefully, that will be specified in the statutory guidance.

Ms Hanlon: The statutory guidance will clarify that for the purpose of "serious harm" applications to court. The front-end piece around referrals into adult protection refers to an adult "at risk of harm". I understand that the reasoning behind using that wording, compared with the current definitions of an adult "at risk of harm" and an adult "in need of protection", is that we could not determine that an adult needed intervention to protect them until we had done the assessment. That is why "harm" rather than "serious harm" is referred to at that point in the Bill.

Miss McAllister: That helps us to understand it. We heard from the witnesses who previously gave evidence that the definitions are important.

I have a few more questions, but I know that others have questions, so my last question will be on the overlap with the Mental Capacity Act. Someone — I cannot remember who — talked about the penalties for ill treatment and wilful neglect, the disparity in the penalties when it comes to carers and care providers, and the overlap with that Act. There was not much on those issues in the written submissions, so I do not know whether anyone wants to elaborate on how we should consider them, particularly the disparity between penalties for care providers and those for care workers.

Ms Hanlon: That is for the Department of Justice to answer and provide detail on.

Miss McAllister: Are you concerned about the difference?

Ms McBride: There is a concern that there seems to be a high penalty for a care worker but that the details on the corporate body are not in the Bill. The Mental Health (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 also refers to wilful neglect. It is about how the Department of Justice determines what the penalty for that should be. There is not much detail on that in the Bill.

Miss McAllister: That would not be covered by the Department of Health, anyway.

Ms McBride: No. It would be the Department of Justice.

Miss McAllister: Thank you.

Mrs Dillon: First, I will make a point, and then I will ask a question. We need the Department to establish what resource will be available, because I saw with the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act 2021 that, when resourcing does not follow legislation, you do not get adequate training. We create a false expectation that we will deliver something, particularly for women and children, that is then not delivered because the PSNI and our judiciary do not get the proper training and do not implement the legislation correctly. We really need to hone in on the issue of resourcing.

The Bill introduces new criminal offences for ill treatment and wilful neglect and creates an adult protection board that, understandably, you want to be a learning board rather than a blame-focused board. What safeguards and whistle-blowing protections are needed, in law or in guidance, to ensure that front-line social workers and care staff are not scapegoated for under-resourcing or systemic problems? Do you have suggestions on that specific issue?

Ms McBride: When it comes to serious adverse incidents (SAIs) and domestic homicide reviews (DHRs), in which I am also involved, the focus in the trust is very much on learning. It should be enshrined in the legislation that the serious case reviews should focus on learning, as opposed to blaming. Obviously, steps may have to be taken if people have been negligent, but, generally speaking, that focus needs to be enshrined in the guidance and in the Bill.

Mrs Dillon: We need to have something on that in the Bill, and we need to establish what that would look like. I do not know whether you have suggestions on that. You do not have to answer that today; perhaps you could write to the Committee with any suggestions. We need to make sure that whatever is in the Bill meets the needs of the people who have to work with and deliver it; those people understand it better than anybody sitting in this room.

Mr McCafferty: It is important not to look at it in isolation. It has to be put in the context of agency, individual and professional responsibilities and the duty of candour, which the Committee is familiar with. It is important that we look at all those aspects in the entire context. I thank you for raising the matter, because, in any of those settings, particularly when you get into the area of protection, whether it is in children's services or adult services, it is difficult. There is always risk associated with it. There is a real obligation on us, in agencies, related to the support and supervision that we put in place and how well the whole system is resourced.

The Chairperson (Mr McGuigan): Those are all the questions that we have for you. Thank you very much. The information and the presentations that you have given us today are very useful, so I appreciate your coming along.