Last week the newspapers carried advertisements for relief residential care workers in Oberstown Boys' School in Lusk. This is an institution often in the news, usually because it has been said in court that there was no room in it for a specific young offender convicted of multiple offences, writes Carol Coulter.
The young offender is then released back on to the streets, often only to offend again, sometimes causing injury or even death to others, as happened when two members of the Garda Síochána were killed by two such youths driving a stolen car.
Oberstown Boys' School is what used to be called a reformatory school. It is licensed to accept boys between 12 and 16 years old, who have been sentenced to a minimum of two years.
It operates about midway on the continuum of custodial provision for young male offenders. At one end are what used to be called industrial schools, now known as special schools, to which younger, less serious, offenders are sent. At the other are either secure facilities for habitual absconders, or St Patrick's Institution, which used to be called a borstal, and which caters for young offenders over the age of 17. Oberstown, therefore, caters for the older, and more serious, end of the juvenile market in offending.
The job of residential care worker is described in the advertisement as involving care programming, case management and key working. Ideally applicants should be over 21 and be qualified in social care, teaching, nursing, social sciences or psychology - that is, in possession of a relevant degree.
Mr Michael O'Connor, director of Oberstown, told a conference in Scotland two years ago on Children, Young People and Crime in Britain and Ireland that, in addition to their normal work, a residential care worker is required to be a "key worker" for one or more boys, liaising with the family and helping to draw up an individualised care plan.
The vast majority of these boys come from troubled or indifferent homes, and in the same paper Mr O'Connor explained how the family and community environment often militated against the work of the school.
They also usually have very low self-esteem and behavioural problems.
Yet many of them emerge with a Junior Certificate, often the only State education certificate ever obtained by a member of their family.
So clearly this is difficult and demanding work. It is also important work, and Mr O'Connor said that the skills obtained in Oberstown, while not often producing an immediate cessation of offending behaviour, did help the boys to make the right choices about their lives a few years later as they matured.
So how do we value the people who do such work?
Not very highly, if we are to judge by the pay offered. The advertisement offers €10.90 an hour to potential applicants, who, we must remember, should be qualified in teaching, nursing, social work or a similar discipline.
Based on a 40-hour week, with six weeks' annual holidays, this amounts to €19,136 a year. If the care worker is working a 35-hour week, the hours of a Youthreach worker, his or her annual salary will be €17,549.
This compares badly with the rates of pay available to similarly qualified people in other areas. For example, the basic annual salary of a staff nurse starts at €21,102, rising to €34,103.
A teacher qualified after three years in college will earn €25,537, and a part-time teacher working in a second-level school for Dublin VEC is paid €27.06 an hour. Under the recent agreement on payment for substitution and supervision, he or she can supplement that income by earning €37 an hour.
A social worker without the NQSW qualification starts at €30,014, rising to €41.076. With the NQSW professional qualification the starting salary is €36,142. If a social worker works part-time on a sessional basis, he or she is paid €80.76 for a three-hour session. A prison officer's pay starts at €24,418, rising to €36,002. Prison officers do not need a third-level qualification, though they must serve a two-year probation period.
A spokesman for the Department stressed that the positions advertised were for relief care workers, and pointed out that full-time care workers start at a salary of over €22,000.
However, even €22,000 falls well below the salaries of similar professionals in other areas. And these areas are much less demanding than working in a centre like Oberstown, where the children carry with them the anger and frustration that arise from of years of social exclusion and poor parenting.
Society is horrified when a tragic incident highlights the difficulty of finding appropriate detention facilities for young offenders. But if young qualified professionals interested in working in such centres are given a clear message by society that they are valued less than teachers, social workers or prison officers, how will that ever change?