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"The event was the first of its kind in Northern Ireland, and
included local, regional, national, and international
representation. Over one hundred attendees from the five
Health and Social Care Trusts (including front line social
workers, managers and Executive Directors of Social
Work), the Department of Health, Northern Ireland Social
Care Council, the Strategic Policy and Planning Group,
NIPSA, BASW_NI, the Health Services Executive (Donegal
- older people service and Dublin - mental health
service) and TULSA (Republic of Ireland, Family and Child
Agency) participated in a day long exchange of practicebased approaches and models used in current practice to
manage service pressures and social worker caseloads".
"This event has provided confirmation of the
views of multiple perspectives on safe staffing in
social work. There is a shared goal, which is to
take an evidence-informed approach to this
critical matter. Safety for service users is
enhanced by the safety and wellbeing of our
workforce, who must feel supported, valued, and
given workloads within human capacity. Actions
to address workforce turnover and instability
must be a priority to improve 'safe staffing
working conditions' and retain staff, and this is our
collective responsibility."
Dr McFadden commented:
Aine Morrison commented:
Research has begun across all five HSC Trusts
on data collections at team level workload
information, as well as interviews and focus
groups with front line social workers and
teams. The project is estimated to be
completed by December 2023.