Ivan Brownlee is chairperson of NIPSA Branch 516 and has worked as an Education Welfare Officer for 15 years. Ivan has been encouraged by number of EWOs joining NIPSA.

Picket Line Voices

Our skills were not valued and we were not listened to!

I have spent most of my time as an EWO as part of the North Belfast Team, apart from a couple of years with the Looked After Children Team.

We deal each day with children who have experienced several adverse childhood events. These include children who have experienced or witnessed violence in their home or community, have experienced abuse or neglect, have mental health problems, have had a family member who has attempted suicide or died by suicide, have grown up in a family with substance misuse or instability due to parental separation.

Over the past 20 months during the Covid pandemic, I kept in contact with many families who have felt vulnerable and marginalised in order to help signpost them to other services for practical support.

Before completing my social work qualification, I worked for several years as a youth worker. I was proud to get a job as an EWO where I could use my specialist social work skills directly in early intervention to help children maximise their opportunities to achieve in school. Over a number of years, we have seen just how difficult it is to recruit and retain EWOs.

This has put additional stress on staff dealing with increasing waiting lists. One of the reasons this has happened is because of the widening pay gap – now over £5,000 per year – between EWOs and social workers in the HSC Trusts.

EWOs felt that management at the Education Authority had not valued their skills and had not listened to staff on the ground, so they decided that enough was enough. The turn-out in our ballot for industrial action – with 94% voting in favour of strike action – demonstrated the depth of anger and the strength of feeling there is among EWOs in our battle for pay parity.

And since we lodged our pay claim, I’ve been encouraged by the number of EWOs signing up to join NIPSA. Our pay dispute has shown the strength workers can bring to bear when they are part of a trade union, and I have been particularly energised to see my fellow EWOs so keen to join our picket lines. Personally, it's a great boost when you’re standing in dreadful weather on the picket lines to be joined by local MLAs, councillors, NIPSA officials and members of other trade unions. And we have received messages of solidarity from right across Ireland. This has made us even more determined to keep on fighting to get the pay we deserve as social workers.