Ms Áine Lynch:

A number of things were raised by parents in their more detailed comments around this. One issue highlighted was in terms of the support from someone outside the family and how the individual class teacher giving individual support to a child was seen as the biggest area of support. More than 60% of parents made reference to this. One complication is that when children go back, some will be going back into a different class with a different class teacher. The connection they had with the previous teacher is not available to them in the same way. We need to plan to see if we can work something in through the schools whereby children going into new classes have some connection with their old teacher as well. That may be where they think they can get the most support from.

For a long time, the National Parents Council Primary has been advocating for in-school therapeutic supports and an education therapeutic support system. We need to understand the importance of the school staff - especially the class teacher - with whom children are engaging all the time. We need to support the teacher through training to enable the teacher to offer the first line of support to children. That in itself would alleviate the anxiety of some children and some of the mental health problems that arise. In the first instance we need to ensure support for all children in the system through the class teacher having additional support. Then, we need more specialised support for smaller groups of children and individual children. We have been advocating for that to be increased for some time.