Social workers to strike over election day as Northern Ireland dispute escalates

Social workers will carry out a three-day strike over election day in an escalation of a dispute in Northern Ireland over staffing levels described as “unsafe” by their union.

The walkout by children’s practitioners at the South Eastern Health & Social Care Trust will run from 3-5 July.

Their union, NIPSA, has timed the strike to coincide with the 4 July election.

“The strike is timed to force the political decision makers in the Northern Ireland Assembly and all the political parties to make a properly resourced health service a priority during this election and to highlight the specific issues in the family and childcare sector,” a NIPSA spokesperson said.

“This strike action is part of a rolling programme of strike action and action short of strike action across all health trusts in Northern Ireland.”

The walkout follows a three-day strike by children’s practitioners at the Belfast trust last month.

At the time NIPSA said that “long-term chronic understaffing” had meant that “the service [was] not being provided safely, staff [were] carrying excessive caseloads, and stress and illness [were] commonplace”.

Longstanding social worker shortages

Staff shortages across children’s social work in the region is a longstanding issue, acknowledged by both employers and the Northern Ireland Executive (the devolved government). It was also highlighted in last year’s report of the Independent Review of Northern Ireland’s Children’s Social Care Services, led by Professor Ray Jones.

Combined vacancy and absence rates ranged from 26% to 41% in family intervention (child in need/child protection) teams, and from 21% to 86% in looked-after children’s teams across the five trusts, as of February 2023, said the review’s report, published in June 2023.

Gateway (front door) teams across three of the five trusts had vacancy rates of 23%, 25% and 38% at the same time, it added, with Jones urging action to tackle a “workforce crisis”.

Lack of progress on tackling workforce issues

Progress since then has been stalled by the fact that devolved government was only restored in Northern Ireland, after a two-year hiatus, in February 2024, and an alleged lack of funding. Robin Swann, who recently stepped down as health minister, described the Department of Health’s (DoH) 2024-25 budget settlement, largely derived from a UK government block grant, as “entirely inadequate”.

However, NIPSA has accused the DoH of a failure of strategic planning in not dealing with an increase in demand for children’s services on the back of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis.

In response to the strike, a DoH spokesperson said the current minister, Michael Nesbitt and the department generally “recognise the sustained pressures that social workers are facing”.

Actions to tackle social work workloads

They added: “The department and health and social care trusts are undertaking a series of both short and longer term actions to ensure that social workers have safe and manageable workloads. This includes a programme of workforce and service reform to drive forward a range of improvements.”

The spokesperson also said the DoH had commissioned an extra 40 social work training laces for 2024-25 to add to the current 285 at the existing programmes run by the Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and the Open University.

They said this would “in time, help to alleviate some of the workforce pressures in the sector”.

Concerns over impact of strike

However, the spokesperson said the department was “very concerned about the impact the planned industrial action will have on children and families, as well as on social workers”.

In relation to next week’s dispute, NIPSA said it would engage with the South Eastern trust “to ensure life and limb cover is in place”.

A spokesperson for the trust said: “The South Eastern trust continues to plan for industrial action and is working hard to protect critical services and to minimise, as far as possible, any impact on children and their families. 

“The trust is involved in discussions with the trade unions, the Department of Heath and regional partners in an attempt to resolve the issues raised.”