Ms Lorraine Dempsey:

We were fortunate to have an introductory meeting with the Minister the week before last, and we have a follow-up meeting organised for next week with the Minister. The key areas for us are supporting schools to have adequate resources to support additional needs for children with special needs that might have been compounded by the extensive period at home. That would involve looking at the whole school profile in respect of making amendments to it for the allocation of special education teachers and SNAs. We feel that it can be challenging enough at times, but especially in a context where there may be ongoing issues for some children settling back into school because of leftover changes in behaviours, that challenge or otherwise. Where schools identify a need for those additional supports, there should be a quick response.

Ms Fanning reiterated the issue of those at very high risk and the plans for supporting them at home. The Department currently has no plans to support children in the high-risk medical group at home. They are expected to attend school. Even if those children are given a medical instruction to stay at home but they are at high risk, the document is not clear on the guidelines regarding whether the Department would step in and have that continuity of schooling programme open to them. There is no indication as to what will happen in the case of children who have another family member at very high risk, whether a parent or a sibling. This is happening already. Families are having to make extremely hard decisions concerning their children, particularly at second level, who may not be going back to school because either a sibling or parent is at very high risk and there are concerns about the potential to bring infection back into the home, with catastrophic results.

Other than engaging with Tusla, it does not seem there is any proposal for those children to engage in continuing education. There is psychological damage to the child who may not want to put their family member at risk. There is also an educational issue for them in that, without standard provision being made in the plan for them, those children will be at home. They will not have access to home tuition. The proposal is not that the parents want to engage in home schooling. They want their children to maintain contact with the school but that should be formalised rather than what we hear now, which is that it is left up to individual schools.

In terms of additional supports from NEPS, those teams would be scaffolding around the schools, whether coming from NCSE or children's disability network teams, to ensure there is enough capacity there and that the schools feel supported in addressing any challenges that children with disability may have, which were compounded over the past six months.

Regarding parents who may be unable to return to employment, particularly if the child is in the very high risk category, there is no allowance for them other than to take permanent leave from their employment, with catastrophic economic consequences to the family unit. These people are having to make decisions. They might have term contracts according to which they were at home during the summer but they are expected to turn up to work this week and, unfortunately, they cannot. There is no provision for them.