Referrals to Tusla up 13% in 2022 as CEO calls for more social workers 

It comes as interim chief executive Kate Duggan said was it seeing "unprecedented demand" and that the number of social workers graduating needed to rise from 200 to 500 a year.

Ms Duggan said all referrals require a screening to determine if a child is in immediate risk of harm and to do that requires a referral to a social worker.

"What we have seen is approximately around 22,000 cases open to social work at any one time,” Ms Duggan said. 

She told RTÉ's Morning Ireland that Tusla was challenged by significant workforce issues, leaving a large number of children awaiting an allocation to a social worker.

“We have a supply issue in Ireland with the number of social workers that are qualifying from third-level universities this year,” Ms Duggan said. 

“I understand there's approximately 220 social workers graduating this year, 163 of those have been offered a permanent job in Tusla. We estimate that around 500 social workers need to be qualified every year to serve the requirement for that profession across sectors in Ireland.” 

When asked how many social workers Tusla needs now, Ms Duggan said it would need 200 additional social workers to provide the services they would like.

Speaking about the annual report, Ms Duggan said: “We certainly are challenged in terms of the timeliness of the response that we have in relation to particularly family support services. But what we are seeing is an unprecedented demand and that is causing the challenge that we're facing.

We need investment. We need additional investment where we've seen an increase in referrals to our service, a significant increase in demand for services. We do need the investment to scale that and that is investment in terms of replacement capacity. 

"It's investment for the community voluntary sector, it's further investment in the welfare and support services and certainly a further investment in the wider therapeutic mental health disability services.

“What we want to see is children coming into care who need to come into care, receiving a high-quality and timely service. But we also want to be able to better support children to remain at home and whether they need particular therapeutic services or their families and parents need supports in relation to perhaps addiction or mental health, that those supports are there. 

What all of us want is that we keep children with their families, we keep family units in place as well.

“I think we can continuously improve. I think we recognise that services can be better. We recognise that children and families deserve better. But we also need to acknowledge the good work that's been done and the significant efforts that are being made to improve services.”

It comes as a letter written by now-retired judge Dermot Simms was included in the Child Law Project publication on Monday. 

It warned the State could face claims “arising out of its failure to comply adequately with its duty of care and statutory duty” to children in care, revealing that 130 children are currently in unsuitable and unapproved accommodation across the country.

Responding to Mr Simms comments, Ms Duggan said the 130 children were in “special emergency arrangements”, a short-term solution to combat limited housing arrangements.

As of this week, 145 children remain in special emergency arrangements, 55 of those were already familiar with the agency beforehand.

In 2023 alone, Ms Duggan said 220 separated children have approached the agency seeking international protection.

That is children under 18 that have arrived in Ireland on their own from another country.

Of those, 72 of those came from Ukraine and the remaining 148 are from various other countries such as Somalia and Afghanistan.

Ms Duggan said up until the end of January of this year, 5,600 children were in the care of the State, with 90% of those in foster care.