Mr. Martin McFadden:

I thank the joint committee for having us down from Donegal today. It is lovely to get the opportunity to present to everybody. I will try not to duplicate anything my colleagues have said. My aim is to give a flavour of the content and delivery of the programme and what makes us different.

This is the first programme of its kind in the country, as I am sure the joint committee is aware. It is very much a cognitive behavioural approach. My own orientation as a counsellor is interpretative and I draw on different skills and tools to work with particularly difficult or resistant clients who present. The participants who come to us usually come through a solicitor or are referred by a judge. As such, they come with a certain amount of resistance and do not really want to be there at the start. We must, therefore, work with them. It is very important that we meet them individually first and find out a little about who they are, what they are coming with and what are their needs. Building that rapport and trust is very important. It is possibly the first time they have sat down with someone and had that kind of conversation. When we get to the delivery of the programme, week one is around emotional control and basic communication, which is very important. Driving is a highly complex social activity that has a language all of its own. A lot of the time when one talks to these kids, they are not aware of what they are doing and why. That is part and parcel of why we have been successful. We have dug underneath and gone to a different level to find out exactly why they are behaving the way they are; much of the time, they have not realised why themselves. As such, it is a classic cognitive behavioural approach. If we can change the thinking, we change the behaviour. That is very important.

We give value to the course when we start off. We always contract with the group to give value, safety and confidentiality to its members so they feel they can express themselves within that forum. That is very important as it is something they may not be used to. The programme is client and person-centred. It is a collaborative, shared learning experience.

Mr. Doggett will agree with me that we have also learned much from the participants coming through the programme. It is about maintaining balance also. We are working on a very serious issue. Road safety is highly sensitive, and we are very conscious of that, but it is also about getting the participants to engage and, to date, that has been superb. It is also about raising awareness and getting people to understand that they have a social responsibility in that there are other road users. It often goes deeper than just road safety. It goes across the board in terms of their own work or family environment.

We try to change that automatic thinking to more skilled thinking, and we have drawn from a number of people across Europe who have lent some of their programme to us. There is one from Canada, for example, which involved one of the men coming here to train with us for a week on reasoning and rehabilitation, based on a 30-year, evidence-based programme that works with young offenders and so on. We have drawn from many places and pieced all that together quite well.

In terms of the delivery, it is not a lecture as such, but we have group discussion, PowerPoint, some role play and case studies, so it is quite good.

On the aims, we try to get participants to think about self-control. Impulsiveness is a major aspect, particularly with young people, and it is what gets them in trouble in the first place. We try to temper that slightly or at least get them to become aware of it. It is about getting them to stop and think. It is about trying to get them to think about their thinking, to use more critical reasoning and to consider objectives and different decision making styles. This is all heavy stuff for young people, but all I can say is that my experience to date is that it works when it is done in a simple form.

Social and societal skills are very important. Some people can come in who might not necessarily have a set of skills. We have found that peer influence has been a huge issue also. We identified that early on and brought in part of the final module where we do some work on peer reviews and skills. It is about how one can say "No" and not lose face. That is very important for young people. We dig into the moral values and core beliefs as well, which is also very important. It is about raising awareness and getting that emotional management.

On the last day we bring in first responders from the ambulance service and someone who has been involved in a serious collision. We do a talk and then review what we have done over the previous month. What I have found, and this goes back to what I said at the outset, is that these guys come in every morning and they are quite resistant and closed, but as the programme wears on, they become open, involved and engaged, and they go off and tell their friends. It is by no means a get-out-of-jail card. They work for the certificate they get, and it is beholden on us to hold up the integrity of the programme to maintain that. To bring it forward, we ask the committee members to endorse the programme for us.