Ms Teresa Griffin:

I thank the committee for its invitation to attend this afternoon. Mr. Sé Goulding is head of operations for the NCSE and Ms Mary Byrne is head of special education. The NCSE has a vision of a society where children and adults with special educational needs can achieve their potential. We all know "it takes a village to raise a child" and for a child with additional needs, the village needs to comprise a family, appropriate schooling and support, if required, from clinical and therapeutic professionals. These supports include clinical psychology, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and psychiatric support etc. From the outset, I emphasise that the NCSE is very supportive of the approach being taken under the HSE progressing disability services for children initiative, as well as A Vision for Change. We welcome the move away from a multiplicity of therapy service providers to the development of regional multidisciplinary teams around the country. The NCSE is represented on the various national and local groups leading this initiative. In many places around the State, our special educational needs organisers work well with local HSE disability services to plan and put services in place for students with special educational needs and we work hard to ease anxieties of parents and children in transitioning to and from school.

Special education is a key Government priority and the NCSE is very appreciative that the resources we need to provide to schools have continued to be made available to us, despite the very difficult fiscal environment. We have the ability to respond to growing student enrolments by continuing to allocate additional resource teacher and special needs assistant, SNA, posts in line with need and by establishing special classes and expanding special schools. When meeting colleagues from the HSE, they advise us of their capacity issues and constraints. Groups constantly tell us the position around the availability of clinical and therapeutic service continues to be problematic for children, families and schools. When a child needs clinical or therapeutic intervention and does not receive it, we all know there can be significant repercussions for the child’s development and in terms of an ability to access education.

It is generally acknowledged that HSE-funded early intervention teams work well in certain areas of the country but I have been told by parental, school and advocacy groups that access to important health services is limited in other parts of the country, with gaps in services and long waiting lists. The main issues raised include lengthy initial waiting lists, insufficient intervention if it is provided; inadequate support in mainstream school settings; concern that only some students in special classes receive support and others in the same class with equivalent need do not receive such support because of the segregated multiple service providers and concern that some children have to be taken out of school and brought to clinical settings.

The difficulty around accessing a diagnosis of disability was one of the reasons the NCSE recommended to the Minister a change in how resource teachers are allocated to mainstream schools. We felt one cannot base access to additional teaching support on a diagnosis of disability if there is not national consistent access to such a diagnosis. Parents and schools have told us that they make difficult decisions based on the availability or absence of therapy services. For example, parents seek to send their child to a special school or a special class where he or she might get therapeutic support even if the child is capable of attending mainstream education, parents refuse to allow their child to leave a special class or special school setting because they might lose their therapy intervention and parents seek professional reports simply to access special school placement so the child can get therapeutic or clinical supports. Worryingly, mainstream and special schools are encountering severe difficulty in deciding if they can maintain the enrolment of some students who present with challenging behaviour in the absence of clinical supports. We all agree that none of these scenarios is a good outcome for the child and none is in line with the national policy of supporting inclusive settings.

As I stated at the beginning, the NCSE is broadly supportive of the progressing disability services initiative but children are only children for a period. We have recommended that, pending the full roll-out of the progressing disabilities initiative, children with special educational needs should have early and timely access to sufficient clinical services, which should be provided on a consistent, efficient and equitable basis throughout the country. This is something that the HSE is also working hard to put in place. I am very happy to any of the committee's questions.