Ms Joan McCrohan:

I will not make a party political statement, but I would like to put on the record that IMPACT is recognised as a great champion in supporting the needs of children and has built its branches, membership and new educational vision on its commitment to children.

I wish to put that on the record because there was a certain amount of criticism aimed at our submission.

Special needs assistants are well placed to provide a holistic support within the classroom and, in the mainstream setting, the special needs assistant is critical to ensuring peer group acceptance and total inclusion. Children with difficulties do not naturally integrate with other children easily. It is only with some sort of adult assistance, supervision, encouragement or training that that will happen. They will not gravitate towards each other. I know this from my experience in school. Children who are different or who have difficulties and, in particular, children who do not have allocated support will be isolated, left out and excluded because they are not good at sports, for instance, and the rest of the children like to play football or sports at break time. Children with difficulties or who are different tend to be isolated unless there is an SNA who will encourage the other children to play. I was very active in that respect myself.

The role of the SNA has existed for 18 years in the mainstream setting. It was introduced in 1997 by Deputy Micheál Martin. I do not think anyone at the time anticipated how much parents of children with difficulties wanted their children to be educated in the mainstream setting and for them to be fully interactive with other children, their peers, with whom they would be playing in their communities at home. They did not want them to be segregated in special schools. Until then, if a child had any kind of a difficulty or was different in any way at all, the child was sent to a special school. We have made tremendous progress since 1997. Everyone here would acknowledge that the success has been, in the main, down to the passion and commitment of special needs assistants in supporting the children. All the training they have had to date they have undertaken on their own time and at their own expense.

There are fantastic schools and principals which work very closely with us. Mr. Dessie Robinson, my three colleagues and I, who represent special needs assistants in schools, find that when we go to a school to work out an issue, we tend to build great relationships with most of the principals. Usually the issue is down to a misunderstanding about the role of the special needs assistant. Clarification is brought and it is identified that the SNA is not a whole-school resource or an assistant to everyone who needs a bit of photocopying or laminating done but is there for a specific purpose. Special needs assistants are recruited specifically to assist the school to provide for children with assessed additional care needs. Not every child with additional needs who needs support is lucky enough to get the support. In those cases, best practice is that the SNA will provide access to the children who need it even though they have not been allocated it. There is general goodwill throughout the school and everyone is on the same playing field and on the same team.

I was one of the SNAs fortunate to get one of the 100 positions in 1997. From day one, I was involved in preparing the care plans for children, even before individual education plans were formalised, and I was always treated as part of the team. This was always considered best practice. We had multidisciplinary teams, including people from Enable Ireland who would come into the school, occupational therapists and physiotherapists. The teacher and I would work with the occupational therapist and physiotherapist. We would integrate those sessions into PE and elsewhere. We had a great awareness of the need to ensure the child was sitting properly, for example, or that the child needed a footstool to keep their posture right.

I am aware of the system in England where there is the position of teaching assistant. Ms Teresa Griffin is right. The teaching assistant is for the whole school and not specifically for children with special needs. The difference in the role of the teaching assistant is he or she can take over the class when a teacher has a course day and the children are not divided up the way they are here. The assistants have little or nothing at all to do with children with special needs. There are special needs assistants in England who are assigned to children with special needs. They have three grades: classroom assistant, special needs assistant and teaching assistant. They all have different roles and responsibilities.

It is not fair or true to say the SNA has no role to play in terms of supporting the education or teaching of a child with special educational needs. It is imperative that children with special educational needs are taught by a qualified class teacher. That is a given. Every child has a right to be taught by a qualified class teacher and we are very much advocates of that position. However, in reality, the SNA must, when necessary or appropriate, under the direction of the teacher, support that academic work and keep the child on task and let the teacher know if the child is having difficulties in order that the teacher can spend some more time on the lesson or, perhaps, take the rest of the children and keep an eye on them while they are assigned a task when the teacher is dealing one-to-one with the child.

I will conclude by reiterating that we are very grateful to Senator Moran for taking the matter to this level and for bringing about the report. We are grateful for the invitation here today to give the view of our members. It is a role about which I am passionate because I still consider myself an SNA. Although I work with IMPACT, I work closely with the schools, special needs assistants and non-teaching staff in schools. IMPACT is extremely committed to advocating and campaigning for support for children with special needs and to advocating for every child who needs support to get it.