McGimpsey welcomes ‘Children Order statistical table for Northern Ireland (2008/2009)’ figures

Social Services Minister, Michael McGimpsey has today commented on the publication of 2008/2009 statistics on children’s social services.

The figures reflect a range of areas relating to children’s social care including child protection, children in need and looked after children.

Minister McGimpsey said: "These figures quantify the increasing numbers of children being referred to social services and illustrate the huge contribution which social workers and other health and care professionals continue to make to protecting our children and assisting their families.

"The focus tends to be on the minority of cases where things go wrong and children come to harm. However, the statistics released today give an overall picture of the significant efforts being made by social services to minimise this. The work of these staff on the ground, working in difficult and complex circumstances needs to be better appreciated by us all. We are fortunate to have a highly trained workforce dedicated to ensuring that our children continue to be given all the support and protection they need."

The Department has invested £10million in 2008-2011 and introduced a wide range of reforms aimed at strengthening child protection services. A further investment of £3.5million to create around 70 extra posts in Health and Social Care were also announced by the Minister in February 2009.

Michael McGimpsey continued: "The family and children’s sector is acknowledged to be historically underfunded by 30%. I have sought to try to address this though a number of investments over the past two years. These services have also been undergoing significant reform through the introduction of gateway teams in each Trust making it easier to refer cases to social services; the development of a regional tool for assessing the needs of children and improved multi-agency and multi-disciplinary training.”

Reforms and improvements include:

• significant increases in child protection cases referred from within the health and social services family and partner agencies. Almost 50% increase and 13% increase in referrals from the school/education sector and the police respectively,
• more than 40% increase in joint child protection investigations conducted by the police and social services.
• more than two-thirds increase in referrals of children aged 0-4

The Minister added: “We have also sought to improve the quality of assessments of children and our interventions. The figures show the numbers of children being assessed and receiving additional services has also increased, by more than 20%, compared to the previous year.

“Given the current economic climate, families are under more and more pressure and children and young people are becoming more vulnerable. These figures though show that despite an underfunded, under-resourced and increasing sector, we are continuing to strengthen children’s social service provision and safeguard our most vulnerable people.

“I will continue to argue for more resources to invest in services for this vulnerable group of people to ensure they are given all the support and protection they need.”

Notes to editors:

1 The statistical bulletin is available to download.

2 Media enquiries to the DHSSPS Press Office on 028 9052 0579. Out of office hours please contact the Duty Press Office via pager number on 07699 715 440 and your call will be returned.