When given an opportunity to speak at Thursday鈥檚 meeting, Nipsa official Jim Farrell explained that fellow members feel they had to take a stand because they felt that their voices were not being heard. “Ask any of the social workers, they will tell you harrowing stories of what it is that they鈥檙e experiencing, not just the environments that they鈥檙e walking into and households that are broken, but the pressures that they鈥檙e coming under. “We鈥檝e been told that in one instance, there鈥檚 a work area where there鈥檚 meant to be [a team] of 20 to 24 people, [yet] there鈥檚 13 people covering that post. That is really difficult for my members. Where can one person physically do the job of two people? It is literally impossible. 鈥淎nd what鈥檚 happening is that my members hit their breaking point. They鈥檙e going to end up going off sick. We鈥檙e just going around in a vicious circle where work is being passed from one team to another.鈥 Director of Children and Young People鈥檚 Services, Colm McCafferty, explained he was very aware of the issues. Mr McCafferty, who is also executive director of Social Work, commented: 鈥淚 absolutely understand why members have embarked on industrial action. We are a border-facing Trust. We have always experienced more challenges around recruiting staff for that reason. 鈥淭he difficulties that we have are reflected in the fact that, as of today, we have 52 unallocated looked-after children. We have approximately 170 children with disability who don鈥檛 have an aligned social worker at this moment in time, and we have a number of unallocated cases, both within our Gateway service and our Family Support Service. 鈥淚f anybody is aware of a child protection situation that has not been responded to, make sure you bring that to our attention.鈥 Trust chief executive, Steve Spoerry acknowledged the sincerity of the protesters and the difficulties they are facing, however he commended the Trust for being proactive in training new staff: 鈥淚t does come across that you鈥檙e concerned about your colleagues and you鈥檙e concerned about the children. It鈥檚 a dispute motivated by sincere and professional concerns, and that comes through. 鈥淭he concern about the lack of numbers, fundamentally that鈥檚 a lack of numbers being trained and retained, because Northern Ireland is a pretty self-contained labour market. 鈥淭his Trust has done well in recruiting newly-qualified social workers recently. They, of course, require professional supervision and development in their early years, they鈥檙e professionals in managing high risk, complex situations, and that puts a load on experienced staff. 鈥淏ut nonetheless, we have to start somewhere in building numbers back up, and individuals have to start somewhere in terms of their career. So I hope that we can work together to develop those people and encourage them to stay, as they join us. That will be good for all of us.” Chair of the Southern HSC Trust board, Eileen Mullan sympathised with the Nipsa members, adding: 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry that you have to do this. You want to do your job, you want to look after your patients, you want to look after your young people every day, and the shortage of our workforce is just crippling our services.鈥