Ms Marian Quinn:

Parents are central to all the work we do. We have seven services, all of which have an element focusing on parents. In respect of our early years service, it was a valuation through a randomised control trial. We had 18 services, of which eight or nine delivered business as usual. The remainder were the intervention which received wraparound support and additional services. We do a number of specific things for parents. Each of those services had a parent carer facilitator who is very like a home-school liaison officer. It is someone working in the service whose job is specifically working with parents. That is one of the pieces of our early years service that has proved to be very effective and we are glad we have been able to continue that. That piece is continuing now. As part of our mainstream integration, they are being overseen by the county child care committee.

What the parent carer facilitator does is build capacity with parents and help them to engage not just with the service but with their child's development and learning. Like the other two sites, we were involved with Síolta. We have all been doing the quality framework for early years provision. Deputy Catherine Byrne spoke about schools not being able to get parents onto boards of management. Of course, that would be our experience in Tallaght west. As part of our Síolta work, parent carer facilitators worked with parents and our Síolta co-ordinator worked with the staff in the early years service to find a way for the governance of the service to become more real and accessible to people - something people wanted to get involved in. We increased the number of parents involved in boards of management of our early years services.

We have an early intervention speech and language therapy service. It is what we have all been talking about. The speech and language therapist visits the preschool and primary school, akin to what Senator Burke referred to in Cork. Attendance has been 100% as opposed to 50% for HSE assessments. Our model is three-pronged. The therapist works with the child and with either the early years practitioner or teacher to develop their capacity. Accredited training is delivered to them so they are able to reiterate the messages and ways of working of the speech and language therapist. Importantly, they work with parents so there is a formal parental education element in our speech and language therapy. It involves really simple tips for parents such as things one can do to help one's child recognise letters when one is going to the supermarket. It is all about increasing capacity, confidence and awareness of what I as a parent can do to help my child's learning in my everyday life.