Mr. Paraic Joyce:

The Department has an occupational health strategy, which is a supportive resource for teachers. The aim is to promote the health and well-being of all employees in the workplace. Part of that is an employee assistance service, which is provided by Spectrum Life. It is a self-referral service where teachers have access to a dedicated free phone line that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year providing advice on a range of issues such as well-being, legal and financial issues, mediation and management support. It is also available on social media platforms like WhatsApp, email and live chat. All contacts on the service are qualified, accredited and experienced mental health professionals. Where required, short-term counselling is available to employees. The employee assistance service also provides advice and supports to managers and delivers interventions to help them deal with health and well-being issues in the workplace.

The bespoke well-being portal app offers access to podcasts, blogs, live chat, all sorts of topics around well-being, mental health, family life and e-learning programmes across mental health, sleep and a range of well-being topics. It is part of the service provided by Spectrum Life and its mental health promotion manager is available to develop and deliver evidence-based mental health and well-being initiatives to reduce mental health problems in teachers and create the conditions whereby these things can be addressed at school level. It is an access point for advice for individual teachers. It is obviously something-----