Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:18 pm on 27 March 2019.
Okay. Diolch. Children's services: time for change. This is both a negative and positive contribution to a debate we need to have. I think, in Julie Morgan, we have a Minister who cares. So, I think that's a good starting point. Every single detail of this speech relates to a real individual, a real-life situation. None of this is abstract or academic. Minister, the status quo is not working. There's so many gaps in the system. We need better policies and procedures to plug those gaps. It's really important to say that this debate is not an attack on social workers. This is about the system. Social workers are under-resourced and over-worked. Too much pressure is on them. Their caseloads are unbearable and they're too often placed in impossible positions. No social worker should have more than 20 children to look after, but it's not uncommon for social workers to have 40 cases. The result is that they are simply unable to do the job that they went in the profession to do. They spend their time filling in paper and protecting themselves instead of addressing the serious matters affecting children and families.