News

The Irish Association of Social Care Educators (IASCE) is delighted to announce the creation of a research bursary worth 5000 Euros. The bursary is only available to graduates of professional social care degree programmes from IASCE-affiliated colleges in the Republic of Ireland.

The purpose of the bursary is to enable social care graduates to study any aspect of social care practice in the Republic of Ireland. Depending upon the quality of applications, the adjudicating committee may decide either to offer one award of 5000 Euros or two awards of 2500 Euros.

Successful applicants will be expected to complete their research and publish their findings with 18 months. Half of the bursary will be paid at the beginning of the research process and half upon publication of the findings.

It is expected that a successful applicant(s) will present their research findings to the annual Social Care Ireland Conference.

Successful applicants will be assisted to publish their research in the Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies.

For more information about the research bursary, please contact Aine.DeRoiste@cit.ie or taylor.mark@itsligo.ie or ruth.casey@itcarlow.ie or frank.houghton@lit.ie.

Applications will only be considered from those who fully complete the research bursary application form. Completed application forms need to be emailed to Aine.DeRoiste@cit.ie by Monday11th of June 2012 at 12 noon.  The application form can be downloaded by clicking on this link.

Late applications will not be considered. It is anticipated that successful applicant(s) will be informed by the 30th of June 2012.

The decision of the adjudicating committee is final.

It’s a few days after the Social Care Ireland Conference 2012 and it’s time for us to post a few photos. Do you have a round-up of the conference? Conor Pendergrast of TaskLight has written a post here – let us know if the comments if you have written anything similar.

Thanks for Ann Morohan of Orchard Children’s Services for the photos!

We have now added a page which lists all of the sponsors of our 2012 conference. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank each sponsor for their support in helping us to organise our best conference so far.
Here’s a list of our sponsors:

• TTM Healthcare
• Servisource
• TCI Ireland – Connexion
• TaskLight – Information Management Solutions
• ROC Insurance Consultants
• Peninsula Business Services
• Goldfish
• CPL Healthcare
• Social Care Training Ireland
• Nua Healthcare
• LeasePlan.ie



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View IASCE Social Care Placement Guidelines

“Applied social care: An introduction for students in Ireland”

Gill & MacMillan

(3rd edition due in Spring 2013; Editors Perry Share, IT Sligo & Kevin Lalor, DIT).

Now going into its 3rd edition, this text is primarily aimed at students of social care, and is also of interest to students of social work and youth and community studies.

Please forward a 200 word abstract of your proposed chapter to either of the editors. You should indicate how your proposed chapter will improve and build on the 2nd edition. Please also include references to a maximum of 3 recent publications.

For edition 3, we will be primarily updating the existing chapters but we are open to suggestions for new material/contributors.

Deadline for submission of proposals: Wednesday 29th February 2012.

Selected authors will be required to submit a finished manuscript no later than 31st August 2012.

Dr. Perry Share (share.perry@itsligo.ie), Dr. Kevin Lalor (kevin.lalor@dit.ie)

Social Care Ireland welcomes the draft Core principles for the HSE in relation to practice placement education for H&SCP. We are in agreement with each of the principles outlined in the Draft and we agree that effective practice placements require strong partnership between the HSE and IHEs.

We note that the issue of Garda vetting is not included in this draft. Social Care Ireland would welcome a formal policy position by the HSE on Garda vetting for students. Currently, service providers may require multiple vetting of a student as he/she progresses through the programme. However, previous correspondence from the Garda Central Vetting Unit to one of our members suggests that it is sufficient for each student to be vetted only once, at point of entry. The publication of a formalized policy position by the HSE would help resolve inconsistent approaches being adopted in the garda vetting of social care students undertaking placements in various social care settings.

Undergraduate student practice placements are an integral part of training and education in our field, and students are required to undertake 800 days of supervised placement, as per the 2010 HETAC Award standards for social care work. The Irish Association of Social Care Educators (a constituent body of Social Care Ireland) adopted a range of policies relating to student practice placements in October 2011 (see attached below for further details). Best practice for social care practice placements is outlined in Doyle, J. & Lalor, K. (2009).The social care practice placement: A college perspective. In P. Share & K.Lalor (eds.), Applied social Care: An introduction for students in Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.

Our aspiration is that all practice supervisors will undertake appropriate training, for example the DIT’s 3-day ‘Practice Teaching and Learning’ course -http://www.dit.ie/socialscienceslaw/socialsciences/shortcourses/certificateinpracticeteachingandlearning/

Planned Detention School Facility Shelved

Social Care Ireland views with alarm the shelving of plans by the government to construct the long promised new detention school facility in Lusk Co. Dublin. This decision flies in the face of national and international recommendations that young people, currently in St. Patrick’s Institution, should no longer be detained there.

Furthermore, this backward move is at variance with the strong commitment given by Ministers Alan Shatter & Frances Fitzgerald since coming into office toward ensuring that what went wrong in the past would not and could not be allowed to be repeated. Minister Fitzgerald on a number of occasions has referred to her vision of a “world class child care service” for Ireland. Unfortunately, shelving construction of the proposed detention school significantly sets back that goal. An appropriate, modern detention facility such as that proposed is the least we as a people might expect for those children who have no voice and no vote. Detaining them in St Patrick’s Institution sets them on a road of criminality that will ultimately cost the state far more than a proper facility in which to house and rehabilitate them.

The IASCW (Irish Association of Social Care Workers) views with alarm the findings of HIQA in relation to Gleann Alainn Special Care Unit, Cork. In particular we refer to the totally unacceptable situation where agency staff (sometimes up to 80% of staff on some shifts) are used to look after the most difficult girls in state care, all placed there through the High Court. The moratorium on public service staff recruitment is the nub of the problem in relation to agency staff being used not only in Gleann Alainn but in other HSE units as well. If the moratorium in relation to Social Workers in the wake of the Ryan Report was breached surely it must be breached in relation to the recruitment of qualified, experienced social care workers who are needed at the front line to deal effectively in caring for difficult children.

In fairness, the new National Director of Child / Family Services, Gordon Jeyes has strongly and publicly called for the moratorium on social care workers to be lifted. It is time for Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald to listen to this call before the situation, not only in Gleann Alainn but in other centres deteriorates further.

The are multi layered problems in Gleann Alainn and staff morale is low, compounded by management changes at Director level where there have a number of changes in recent times. This in itself clearly indicates problems in other areas of the unit where staff sick and assault leave -always an indicator of dysfunction and low morale- is high.

Children who come into the residential care system present myriad problems and need consistent, effective systems just to begin to address their problems. We do not need another Ryan Report in 10/15 years where the products of today’s residential child care system will look to have some form of redress for the care they were entitled to but did not get. This despite all that is now ostensibly in place to ensure their care + the fact that a referendum will probably be part of our constitution next year to further protect children’s rights. It will be meaningless if practical measures, backed up by realistic resources, are not made available now.

Noel Howard    

IASCW Coordinator

087 1331280

Social Care Ireland’s 2012 conference will be taking place in Kilkenny on the 28th and 29th March 2012 and will focus on the theme of ‘Taking stock’. The theme of the conference could not be more appropriate. For reasons we are all aware of, we face into an uncertain future and never was there a better time to “take stock.” Three excellent keynote speakers, a wide and varied range of individual presentations and relevant discussion groups feed in to the conference theme. The opportunity for meeting and sharing with people from the three different professions represented by Social Care Ireland – practitioners, educators and managers – has become a very positive and welcome feature of recent conferences. The 2012 conference promises to be no different.

The conference starts at 9am on the 28th March and lasts until 2pm on the 29th. The Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel in Kilkenny City will be hosting us this year.

You can book tickets (and hotel rooms) for this conference online using credit card or cheque. All tickets must be booked online, by clicking on this link.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our sponsors for supporting the Social Care Ireland sponsors. You can click on each sponsor’s logo to go to their website.

“Social Care in 2012 – Taking Stock”

Social Care Ireland 2012 Annual Conference

In Kilkenny, Wednesday/Thursday, March 28th/29th 2012

Abstracts of less than 300 words for workshop presentations related generally to above theme should reach Ann Marie Shier at annmarie.shier@ittdublin.ie or Vicky Anderson at ANDERSOV@itcarlow.ie by Friday, December 2nd 2011.

Further details will be posted when available on Social Care Ireland website and brochure and booking form will accompany IASCW newsletter in late January 2012.

Conference Committee; Ann Morahan & Noel Howard (IASCW), Ann Marie Shier & Vicky Anderson (IASCE) and David Durney & Bernadette Manning (RMA).