Court cases and supervised access visits by parents to children will be affected by a one-day strike by 250 social workers in the Eastern Health Board region today. The strike is part of a campaign by their union, IMPACT, to demand more resources for childcare programmes.
IMPACT official Mr Sean McHugh said yesterday that social workers had been campaigning since 1995 for extra resources without result. Members want an extra £10.6 million recommended by a joint EHB-IMPACT review of services allocated to help reduce the waiting list of over 2,000 children in need of help. As a result of inadequate funding, he said, children were still being placed in totally unsuitable bed-and-breakfast accommodation and his own members were put under intolerable strain trying to cope with emergencies. "Even emergency cases can now wait over six months before being assessed and allocated a social worker", he said.
The union will provide emergency cover to ensure, for instance, that members are available to represent the EHB in cases where interim care orders for children are concerned. Similarly, emergency accommodation cases will be dealt with.
The union provided eight case histories to support its claim that services were in crisis. In one case, a family with six children aged four to 17, where both parents were chronic drug users, no social work service was available.