Ireland has a long and complex social history when it comes to child protection policy and practice. There have been 29 major Irish inquiries involving intra-familial and organisational abuse since the early 1990s, resulting in more than 500 recommendations. The breakdown of these inquiries include seven relating to religious institutions, primarily focusing on how the Church responded to allegations of child sexual abuse involving its clergy. There were also five inquiries into intra-familial abuse, and many others relating to reviews of serious incidents, including the deaths of children in care.

These recommendations have led to new legislation, national child protection guidelines, ancillary policies and the further development of services. But there are questions over whether the recommendations are being effectively implemented and if they are preventing abuse – an issue that the UK is wrestling with as well.

Tusla is the Irish state agency responsible for improving wellbeing and outcomes for children. Its establishment in 2014 involved a comprehensive reform of child protection, early intervention and family support services. The agency has in excess of 60 policies, which devolve from the over-arching 2011 Children First national guidance for the protection of children policy framework. This guidance places responsibility for keeping children safe with everyone, including professionals such as social workers, GPs and the police, but also schools, community organisations and the general public.

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Policy implementation is important as it bridges the gap between the intentions of policymakers and its delivery via frontline services. Implementation is about the operationalising of the policy – the how, rather than the what. I decided that it was important to understand how these 60 policies impact on the actual practices of social workers; specifically, what helps and hinders child protection social workers in the use of policy in their everyday decision-making.

My research findings show that the process of applying policy to practice is highly complex. There are many challenges that need to be overcome while applying child protection policy within real-world practice settings. This is because child protection social workers make practice decisions on a daily basis, within complicated legal and policy contexts.

There appears to be a tension between practitioners following policy guidelines and their need to exercise professional judgement when dealing with specific cases. This is in part because clients and external professionals also have an impact on the ability of social workers to implement policies. Nonetheless, social workers value the Children First framework as they feel it reflects their own values by making children the central focus, while also advocating shared responsibility for their protection.

There is a fear among social workers of using too much individual discretion, making the wrong professional judgement and being held accountable for not being familiar with every possible related policy. This highlights a policy overload felt on the part of child protection social workers. This is hardly surprising given the sheer number of policies with which frontline practitioners are expected to be familiar while at the same time coping with a 98% increase in reports of children at risk in the past seven years.

This lack of awareness highlights the gaps in the implementation process and underlines how communication with staff is a critical part of any policy implementation strategy. In this regard, Tusla has made some positive changes, with the adoption of an internal intranet website and the delivery of regular newscasts via email to all staff. But these policy dissemination methods are passive, as they lack the important active ingredient of giving and receiving feedback. Research has clearly shown that passive forms of information dissemination do not result in new approaches being effectively implemented.

Recently qualified social workers like learning from their more experienced peers and how they apply a particular policy to their practice, rather than passively reading a 20-page policy document. The best way to ensure that social workers will apply a policy is for them to hear a respected colleague say that he or she finds it beneficial.

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Child protection social workers are, by definition, the key participants within any policy implementation strategy. Practitioners I interviewed highlighted three main barriers: the lack of clear leadership; the lack of feedback from frontline practitioners, and too few active dissemination strategies.

As part of the study I’ve made recommendations of how to bridge the gap between policy and practice. This includes the establishment of local policy-implementation groups involving department managers and frontline social workers. The managers would act as implementation leaders; the social workers as implementation champions. These groups would have responsibility for prioritising and overseeing the process. This would provide leadership and help ensure high levels of compliance with child-protection policies. If Tusla were to develop more effective strategies for utilising the extensive knowledge and experience of frontline staff, they would feel more supported in applying policy to their practice.

Olivia O’Connell will be presenting her research at the International Federation of Social Workers European conference in Edinburgh, 6-9 September. The Guardian Social Care Network is media partner for the event