Ms Jenny Gannon:

Oftentimes, HSCL is the only support going into a house and sometimes for families who have been engaged in other support services, we are the only support that is left in a house. Isolation is detrimental, and it is critical and crucial that we are all linked to our communities, so one of the great jobs of HSCL is to encourage that engagement and that openness to other community agencies, whether statutory or voluntary, whether it is their children becoming involved in the local family resource centre or taking part in the strengthening families programme or going through the process of the meitheal with Tusla or facilitating parenting courses and self-esteem programmes for children. All of these encourage them to do what is ultimately the most difficult job in the world, and that is to parent children. As a senior school, moving from primary to secondary school is one area of particular stress and difficulties for many families in our schools. We run a transition programme that supports families through the entire process, from discussing which secondary school setting may suit their child best to enrolling in the school, attending the open nights. In our local community college, St. Conleth's, we are lucky enough to have a HSCL teacher there who we liaise with to ensure a smooth transition. We facilitate the stepping stones programme, which is run by the local Kildare youth project workers, which are also then informed by our SCP and HSCL teams to support the children's transitions through and on to secondary school. My role in that is very much to support the parents to get their children to engage, to discuss how to set up good habits for secondary school and to investigate ways to help keep their children in school. Because of the position of trust that we hold with families, we know their stories. Their stories informs their children's stories, and their children's stories inform the stories of the classroom. As a teacher, I know that helpful small snippets of information can support and be a huge support to a child within a classroom, so oftentimes it will be my job to share, with the permission of the parent, a story that is relevant specifically to the child in the room. It is because of this shared information that behaviours will be sorted out, relationships will be built and children will ultimately positively engage in the classroom and in the school. Ultimately, we are working on a cultural change, a long-term effect. We need to do that, completing all of the paperwork and monitoring and everything else that is required of us, without impinging on the dignity of the families who are part of our service. Having been in the school now for 18 years since the home school liaison was set up in the school, I now can see the long-lasting effect of that.

I can see the rewards because parents who initially engaged in the parent's room all the way back then now bring their children to school themselves. They regularly stop me or Ms Browne in the yard and tell us they remember when their mother was in with us and did a course and that they cannot wait to start their course, or that they were involved in the classroom with Maths for Fun and ask whether it is still done and whether they can get involved. For all of us who work and who want our children to progress through education positively, the HSCL scheme impacts very positively on everybody involved in the education process, including the parents, teachers, pupils, community and, at the end of the day, our whole society.