Department of Children and Youth Affairs

GrumpyMe

https://jrnl.ie/4556234


:eek:
Department of Children and Youth Affairs wakes up, smells the coffee but it all stinks to high heaven!


It would be interesting to hear how much the Department spent on coffee pods over that period. Surely that should give an accurate estimation of how much is allegedly missing from the "honesty box"?

Trigger Happy

What a bunch of dopes. Money was not lodged in 8 months. Box was not secured. No one in charge of it and high staff turnover.

No doubt they will be ceasing the honesty box but insist to keep getting their nespresso pods.

Yamanoto

Zappone should resign.

Nothing to do with coffee pods, she should just bugger off.

JohnnyFlash

Yamanoto wrote: »

Zappone should resign.

Nothing to do with coffee pods, she should just bugger off.

Zappone and Shane Ross in Government. And people continue to vote for independents even when we have that nightmare scenario?

Billy86

If what I saw working in Tusla was indicative of what the DCYA are like, there is literally nothing that will change until they find a way to completely gut ...probably the majority, even... of administrative and middle management (and a good chunk of upper management to boot). Not only incompetent, but openly corrupt and proud of it in closed circles.

Again I was in Tusla and not DCYA so I'm just going on the assumption they have similar cultures, but it's a real shame as the vast majority of social workers (in my experience) are really dedicated and sincere in their efforts, but get scuppered by admin staff who literally threaten to take a month of paid sick leave if someone so much as asks them to answer a phone, or help put a file together quickly for an emergency court hearing given with next-to-no notice (a job that is easy and reasonably quick with 2-3 people on it, but is literally impossible with just 1 doing it due to time constraints).

Their claim in these instances was that "it's not my job", but the problem is their job was tracking Garda clearance for foster carers and keeping track on a spreadsheet... the spreadsheet was copied and pasted over so much it was FUBAR with the conditional formatting irreparably broken, them too incompetent to fix it, and as a result close to 70% of foster carers' clearances were either out of date or never even carried out in the first place. This person, in admin for over 15 years, did not know how to add a column/row in between others in Excel, or how to even wrap text. End result of all of this? They got put in charge of the regional roll out of the new national database (which uses MS Dynamics, extremely similar logic to Excel and MS Access). This database was far better in basically every imaginable way to the old one... but was also a disaster, and if you haven't guessed why yet, it is because they had someone with literally know idea what they were up to, and the work ethic of someone on the dole for 20 years, in charge of it.

She was drinking buddies with the regional manager though, so....................................

Kivaro

Billy86 wrote: »

If what I saw working in Tusla was indicative of what the DCYA are like, there is literally nothing that will change until they find a way to completely gut ...probably the majority, even... of administrative and middle management (and a good chunk of upper management to boot). Not only incompetent, but openly corrupt and proud of it in closed circles.

Again I was in Tusla and not DCYA so I'm just going on the assumption they have similar cultures, but it's a real shame as the vast majority of social workers (in my experience) are really dedicated and sincere in their efforts, but get scuppered by admin staff who literally threaten to take a month of paid sick leave if someone so much as asks them to answer a phone, or help put a file together quickly for an emergency court hearing given with next-to-no notice (a job that is easy and reasonably quick with 2-3 people on it, but is literally impossible with just 1 doing it due to time constraints).

Their claim in these instances was that "it's not my job", but the problem is their job was tracking Garda clearance for foster carers and keeping track on a spreadsheet... the spreadsheet was copied and pasted over so much it was FUBAR with the conditional formatting irreparably broken, them too incompetent to fix it, and as a result close to 70% of foster carers' clearances were either out of date or never even carried out in the first place. This person, in admin for over 15 years, did not know how to add a column/row in between others in Excel, or how to even wrap text. End result of all of this? They got put in charge of the regional roll out of the new national database (which uses MS Dynamics, extremely similar logic to Excel and MS Access). This database was far better in basically every imaginable way to the old one... but was also a disaster, and if you haven't guessed why yet, it is because they had someone with literally know idea what they were up to, and the work ethic of someone on the dole for 20 years, in charge of it.

She was drinking buddies with the regional manager though, so....................................

I'm quoting the whole post ......... because it is astounding.
Thank you for posting it.

And regarding Zappone; we need someone in charge who will at least make an effort to clean up the crap like above. Currently, staff look at how Zappone operates and just follow her lead.