The Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW) warmly welcomes the appointment of Ms. Amanda Casey as the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) Chief Social Worker and looks forward to working in partnership with the Chief Social Worker and her team to progress the wide range of goals, duties and responsibilities attached to the post.
Welcoming the appointment, IASW Chairperson, Vivian Geiran, said:
“Amanda has immense and invaluable experience as a Social Work professional and is widely known and respected in the profession itself and more widely. All her skills and professional experience will hugely enhance what the HSE is setting out to achieve in establishing this position.”
The HSE is the largest organisation in Ireland and employs over one in four of all registered Social Workers in the country. Those Social Workers are deployed across the full and diverse spectrum of HSE services – including in acute care, mental health care (for all ages in acute and community settings), older person’s services (in people’s own homes and in residential settings), adult safeguarding, disability services (in our communities and in residential settings), primary care services (a broad range of community based services and therapies), health and wellbeing services, and social inclusion services. The HSE is thus a hugely important employer of Social Workers and deliverer of Social Work and other health and social care services.
This is the first time that the HSE is appointing a Chief Social Worker (CSW), something for which the IASW has long campaigned. The HSE’s CEO Bernard Gloster has indicated that the CSW will have two key priorities: 1. To develop the profession across all of health and social care multi-disciplinary environments/ teams, with 2. An Immediate priority as a special interest in safeguarding and the full implementation of the independent report on safeguarding in the HSE, by independent expert Jackie McIlroy, reviewing the implementation process and reporting directly to the CEO. The new CSW will also be a direct advisor to the CEO on safeguarding issues. These are priorities that very much align with those of IASW.
IASW Chairperson, Vivian Geiran, added that:
“This is such an important appointment for the HSE and for the Social Work profession. The lack of a Chief Social Worker in the HSE up to now has been a deficit and a stumbling block to progress in many respects. Thankfully that is now being rectified and the IASW looks forward to working with the new CSW and her team, for the benefit of Social Work and all who use Ireland’s health and social care services.”
ENDS
