The head of the Health Service Executive Prof Brendan Drumm has admitted there is a shortage of social workers working for the HSE.
His comments came today at the launch of the HSE's annual report for 2008 which shows there were 5,347 children in care at the end of last year. The majority were in foster care, with 375 in residential care.
Asked how confident he was that these children were being well cared for given the shortage of social workers Prof Drumm said: "I am not so much concerned about that group as about the massively growing demand for people reporting cases of child welfare or child abuse cases...that is something we are likely to see continuing to grow and to be a huge challenge for us."
He said the HSE planned to appoint an additional 60 social workers this year and to standardise the manner in which allegations of abuse or neglect are handled by social workers across the country.
"We are appointing more social workers, we are standardising how the system deals with these requests but it's not something that I can give you any reassurance by saying that I'm happy. It's a continuous challenge," he said.
The Irish Timesreported earlier this month that about 21,000 reports of children at risk were made to health authorities last year. However, one third of these were not allocated to social workers. The data is contained in as yet unpublished HSE report.
Meanwhile the HSE's annual report for 2008 shows its hospitals saw 35,000 more patients as inpatients and day cases last year than in 2007. They also dealt with more than 73,000 births.
But Prof Drumm said there are still often unacceptable waiting times for outpatient appointments and reducing these waiting times is now a major priority for the HSE.
The report also shows that the numbers qualifying for medical cards and GP visit cards increased by 6 per cent and 13 per cent respectively last year, a reflection of the growing numbers losing their jobs.
In addition the report indicates the HSE received some 9,086 complaints last year. More than 2,000 of these were in relation to treatment/service delivery in HSE services and over 900 were in relation to treatment/service delivery in the voluntary hospitals. Another 1,000 or so complaints were in relation to waiting times and as many more were in relation to staff attitude/manner.
Prof Drumm said the number of complaints overall was small compared to the huge numbers of patients dealt with during 2008.
He also defended the €15 million spent by the HSE on outside consultants last year saying this was just 0.1 per cent of the HSE's overall budget.