update
Staffing, Support and What the Figures Actually Mean
meeing 24th june
Question 18 – Who makes the final decision on the staffing model?
Their response:
LN, NS and Senior Managers analysed the workload and decided that there is a need for an additional 9/10 staff.
The new model in the teams has been highly effective, with particular reference to the 6 new Senior Family Support roles and additional Senior Social Work Practitioners - previously there were 404 cases across the teams getting no support. This is down to 71. This has been a significant improvement.
Conflicting information about who makes these decisions
This response immediately raises concerns because it conflicts with information I had previously been given.
At the meeting on 4 March, attended by a Senior Social Worker and Senior Practitioner, I was told that it was the Director who made these decisions.
However, at the meeting in June, I was told that LN, NS and Senior Managers had analysed the workload and decided that additional staff were required.
There is also important context missing from the reference to additional Senior Social Work Practitioners.
At the 24 June meeting, I was told that they did not have the resources to recruit a Senior Practitioner, so an existing Senior Social Worker was upgraded into that role.
Therefore, describing this as an additional Senior Practitioner role does not necessarily mean an additional member of staff was actually brought into the service.
404 cases receiving "no support" reduced to 71 – but what is being counted as support?
The Trust describes the reduction from 404 cases receiving no support to 71 as a "significant improvement".
But that figure needs to be explained properly.
The staff being referred to do not necessarily provide practical support to the child or family. A worker can come to the family home and complete an assessment covering the child's needs, the family's circumstances and what support is required.
A family may then receive a £50 cheque to "do something nice for yourself", and may be placed on a waiting list for short breaks.
I know of families who were placed on the short-break waiting list well over a year ago and are still waiting.
Therefore, simply moving a child from the category of receiving "no support" does not demonstrate that the child's assessed needs are being met or that the family is receiving meaningful practical support.
On paper, reducing that figure from 404 to 71 looks like significant progress. But what exactly did each of those 333 children and families receive that allowed them to be reclassified as receiving support?
That is the figure that needs to be broken down.
Holiday support – 84 increased to 113
The Trust has also highlighted an increase in holiday support.
Last year, 84 families received holiday support. This year, that has increased to 113 children. That is an increase of 29.
At the presentation in March 2025, parents were told that the Minister's additional funding would provide our children and us as parents with more support.
Yet the reality for many families is that support has not increased in any meaningful or consistent way.
There is another important issue behind the figure of 113.
At the 24 June meeting, I was told that holiday support was being delivered using Early Years and Outreach staff, with 12 staff covering the three sectors.
These are not necessarily 12 additional staff recruited solely to provide holiday support. These workers already have other responsibilities within children's disability services.
It was also clear that 12 staff were not necessarily available at every session.
When my own son attended his holiday-support session, a member of staff had to travel from another sector, either Ards or Lisburn, to help provide it.
So while the Trust can report that 113 children received holiday support, that holiday support is 4 21/2 hour sessions over the whole of the summer for each child.
Family Support Workers – the staff actually providing practical support
The position becomes even more concerning when the Family Support Worker numbers are considered.
At the 24 June meeting, I was told there were:
Downe – 1, with another member of staff on long-term sick leave
Ards – 2
Lisburn – 1, with 1 vacancy
That meant there were effectively 4 Family Support Workers available across the three sectors.
These are workers who can actually provide practical support to families.
However, I was also told that a significant part of their role involves providing supervised contact for children in care, sometimes requiring them to travel considerable distances.
This brings me back to a concern I have repeatedly raised.
The Trust presents Family Support, Outreach, Early Years, holiday support and other interventions as evidence of increasing support.
But when the detail is examined, the same limited workforce appears to be carrying multiple responsibilities.
Family Support Workers provide practical family support but also supervised contact.
Early Years and Outreach staff are being used to provide holiday support.
Staff are travelling between sectors to make holiday sessions possible.
An existing Senior Social Worker was upgraded to Senior Practitioner because the resources were not available to recruit one.
At the same time, the Trust reports that the number of cases receiving "no support" has fallen dramatically from 404 to 71.
That is why I believe the headline figures alone are potentially misleading.
The fundamental question is not:
How many children can now be recorded as receiving some form of support?
It is:
What additional practical capacity has actually been created by the additional funding?
How many genuinely new frontline staff have been recruited?
How many are additional people rather than existing staff being upgraded, redeployed or used across several services?
How many are actually in post?
How many posts are vacant or unavailable?
What practical support are those additional staff delivering?
And, most importantly, how many additional hours of practical support and short breaks are children and families actually receiving as a direct result of this investment?
Because an assessment, a £50 payment, being placed on a waiting list or receiving four short holiday sessions may allow a family to be recorded as receiving "support", but that does not necessarily mean their assessed needs are being met.
Reducing the number of families recorded as receiving "no support" is not the same thing as reducing unmet need.
That is the distinction I believe has been completely lost in the figures being presented as evidence of progress.
Question 21 – Where has the £2.4 million gone?
° Increased staffing significantly in GreenHill (yet it has only gone from 3 children, 3 nights per week, up to 6 children, 6 nights per week).
° GreenHill has now a permanent service resource but in temporary accommodation (£140,000 a year for a building that wasn't even meant for our more complex children, reduced to 1 bed because of safety and paying for a package that our children really don't get any benefit from, and they tell us they must prove value for money and that's not including the staff).
£750.000 only, for staffing.
Tripled the Outreach Services (yet nearly 2 years on, my son sits on a waiting list for this support and they can't give me a time frame for when he will receive this support he has been assessed as needing).
Expanded Early Years.
CNLD Nursing service.
So is it £2.4 million or £2.1 million??
As you can see from the FOI, different figures.
question - so who is responsible for appriving large amounts of finance.
"The finance Executive is responsible for signing off large amounts".
Which brings me to the £742,380 for GH goods and services. When asked at the meeting what nearly three -quarters of a million pounds was spent on when GH was only open 2-3 days a week and basically everything is paid for in the lease, their response was agency staff.
Now, I disagreed with that, telling them it was the same staff doing it. There wasn't a load of different staff coming in, hence the reason it couldn't be opened any more than 3 days for that very reason. Well, conveniently, that was left out of their minutes, but it wasn't left out of mine.