Dr. Niall Muldoon:

One of the difficulties with any complaints service is that it is hard to know how many complaints we should be getting. Certainly, it has been a priority of mine to increase awareness of the office. In that regard we are, thankfully, bringing in two new team members in our education and participation office which will increase our opportunities to do outreach work in different parts of the country over the next year. They will come into the office in February. We also mentioned the "tune in" consultation which allows us to try to meet young people where they are. We went around the country and asked where they wanted to hear about this. Surprisingly, the majority agreed that they wanted to hear about it from teachers at both secondary and national school level. That was followed very closely by those wishing to hear from parents. As such, we have to target those people. We will target them through YouTube clips and we have hired a new social media officer and created Snapchat and Instagram accounts, albeit I am not 100% au faitwith those. Those are the places they want to hear from us. We asked them where they would look for the things they needed and those are the places. We are trying to create social media activity on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat so that young people who need to know about us and their rights will find it on their platforms.

We are trying to raise awareness all the time and we are engaging with adults at all levels. I have a very close relationship with teachers' associations, including those for principals and the INTO. We engage with them so that they are aware we are available. We also engage with parents' groups and advocacy groups like the Warriors and associations for the parents of children with special needs. I engage with them all the time and attend the annual general meetings of their organisations. We all try to raise awareness as often as we can. It is difficult to know when we will have reached the right level of awareness. In fact, I do not think we ever will. The whole essence of what we do should also mean we are increasing our complaints because we should always become aware and the more we are aware, the more new people will know about us. The essence of this work is that we are only sought when someone needs us. What we have to do, however, is plant enough seeds so that people know about us now even if they do not need us until ten years later. I am spending a lot of time trying to meet young people in secondary schools. I tell them that they will be the parents in ten years time. If they know about us and children's rights, they will be the ones who can fight for their children's rights in a different way.