To ask the Minister of Health (i) for his assessment of the levels of social workers (a) in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust; and (b) across Northern Ireland to support children, the vulnerable and their families; (ii) to detail the impact a shortage of social workers will have on service users; and (iii) to detail any plans he has to improve this.

The Northern Health and Social Care Trust has reported that their current level of social workers is insufficient to meet the support needs of service users.

Ensuring a sufficient level of social workers continues to be a challenge across all Health and Social Care Trusts due to recruitment, retention and sickness absence issues.

This impacts on social work availability in some services, resulting in the use of waiting lists/unallocated cases to manage referrals, therefore impacting on waiting times for service users in some areas. While there are protocols in place to manage waiting lists, there is the risk that high priority need will not be identified and met.

My department continues to work collaboratively with all five Health and Social Care Trusts to address vacancy and absence levels in social work services. This has involved a number of Department-led regional initiatives in an effort to stabilise the HSC social work workforce, including:

Ceasing the use of recruitment agency social workers in June 2023.

The fast-track recruitment of newly qualifying social workers into vacant posts.

Participating in regional recruitment exercises for Band 6 social work staff.

Developing an evidence base for safer staffing in social work in order to issue guidance to HSC Trusts in 2025.

However, despite this activity there continues to be an inadequate supply of social workers to meet current service demands. I have secured funding for an additional 40 training places for social work this year and I will seek to make further places available as funding allows.