The Health Information and Quality Authority has revealed that Tusla significantly under-reported child welfare cases who were not allocated social workers over a nine month period.
Between October 2023 and July 2024, Tusla data indicated that unallocated cases in its Midlands child protection and welfare service did not rise above 16%.
As a result, the region was not inspected by HIQA as part of its oversight programme of social workers in child protection and welfare or foster care services.
Since October 2023, areas where at least 25% of children have not been allocated social workers have been inspected as part of an oversight programme run by HIQA.
When the initiative began in October of that year, Tusla figures indicated that 11% of the Midlands area child protection and welfare service cases were not allocated to professionally qualified social workers.
From November 2023 to July 2024, data published on the Tusla website and provided to HIQA showed that the number of unallocated cases did not rise above 16% in the region.
As a result, the Midlands service area was not included in HIQA's monitoring programme throughout 2024.
"....these figures were not accurate and in fact the Midlands child protection and welfare service area would have exceeded the 25% on a number of occasions, meaning it should have been included in HIQA's provider programme," according to a report published by the watchdog.
HIQA noted the increasing number of high-priority unallocated cases in the Midlands area between December 2023 and April 2024.
In May 2024, assurances were sought from Tusla senior management in the Midlands.
The area manager said industrial action and staff leave meant there was no capacity to validate the data, including numbers of unallocated cases.
While this system of validation was rectified in June 2024, at the time of the inspection, inaccurate data continued to be published on the Tusla website according to the report.
The revelations led HIQA Inspectors to visit the service over a three day period last November.
Overall, it found that while there were structured management systems in place for the governance and oversight of unallocated cases, the volume of referrals to the service, the number of unallocated cases and the workload of staff meant that these systems were not effective.
This meant that it was not possible to ensure that all children and families in need of a service received it within a reasonable time frame.
Many children and families were waiting prolonged periods for the completion of preliminary enquiries and initial assessments.
The Midlands area was using a paper-based system to screen new referrals, which was later uploaded to the Tusla Case Management system (TCM).
This resulted in some cases having inaccurate dates recorded on TCM for when the referral was screened and oversight at regional and national management levels were impacted.
Where cases were allocated, there was clear and effective communication with children and their families.
However, where children and families were on waiting lists, there was either no communication or communication was poor.
