SIX school social workers will begin work in the South next week but their union says Northern and North-Western schools continue to struggle to provide adequate social worker time.
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Community and Public Sector Union general secretary Tom Lynch said that social workers in the Northern half of the state had been allocated more schools than they could handle.
He said that in the South, while social workers were allocated acceptable workloads, some schools missed out altogether.
The new positions equate to 3.9 full time equivalents.
Education minister Nick McKim rejected the union's claim that recruitment of school social workers had been delayed because of government budget cuts, including vacancy control measures.
He said that the delays were due to a shortage of suitable candidates.
``We are working as hard as we can to fill these roles,'' he said.
``It is really important that every school in Tasmania (has) access to social worker time and I am determined that that will happen . . . Schools have a right to have access to social worker time.''
But Mr Lynch said vacancy control measures meant it was taking a long time to get approval to fill positions and that positions were being left open to save money.
``I've spoken to a lot of social workers and a lot of social workers who have been around for a long time and have been involved in recruitment in the past,'' he said.
Mr Lynch also said there was no funding available to run work experience programs for social work students, which he said was an important part of the recruitment process.
