Dr. Carmel Corrigan:

I thank the Deputy for her comments on the report. Other aspects of the report are equally heartbreaking. One of the cases that comes to mind is the five-year old who tried to commit suicide and is being minded by his seven-year old sibling. There are children who find solace in school. The only thing they look forward to is going to school because it means leaving the facility. All of these issues have an impact on their mental health, which is compounded by a number of factors concerning accommodation such as a lack of space, a lack of facilities and exposure to other family stressors. The situation is compounded by their parents' sense of not being able to parent and cope. Children are ashamed and embarrassed and parents feel like failures, which is not a healthy scenario for a child to spend any time in as part of a family. As Dr. Muldoon mentioned, we have argued for family support to be increased in the report. First, family support should be part of a solution because families, as a whole, in these situations need support. Child support workers are specifically needed to help children not necessarily deal with these issues on a day-to-day basis rather than a psychological level and to have meaningful activities and a little independence and normality. There should then be outreach therapeutic services for children who need more psychological or mental health intervention. I agree with Ms Ward and the Ombudsman for Children that having resources school is a good place to locate these resource but while I do not mean to be flippant, we are back to the Leap card situation. What does someone do for the three months of the summer if he or she has a child who is suffering with this?

We found that many children do not want to identify as homeless and their schools are unaware of their situation. As Ms Ward said, they may show up in dirty clothes or hungry but that may not be enough for the school to identify them as children living in these circumstances. We need to be cautious about where we locate services other than, and as well as, the school system.