Ms Cherie Tyner:

I thank the committee for the invitation to speak today on behalf of our charity and the services and families that we set up to improve outcomes for. I am joined by my colleague, Ms Ciara Ní Raghallaigh, disability speech and language therapist and special needs programme co-ordinator, as well as parents Ms Niamh Kerrigan and Mr. Wayne McSweeney.

The critical value of early access to evidence-based, tailored parenting interventions for families raising a child with a disability through their local children's disability network teams, CDNTs, cannot be underestimated. It is a key component of family-centred practice and essential if we are to ensure delivery of individual family service plans that recognise the importance of focusing on the whole family and not just the child requiring support. Research emphasises that empowering parents with the tailored parenting tools that they define as needed to support their family is a critical determinant of a child's future outcomes, as well as that of their siblings, parents and communities. However, early or any access to proven parenting interventions can be low in some areas, where parents and children can end up in crisis, receiving reactive rather than preventative parenting supports, failing on our commitment to UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, and the right of families to accessible, tailored information to support their family.

As an Irish charity with more than 25 years’ experience researching and developing evidence-based parenting interventions for services supporting families, our collaborative practice, training and supervision of these teams ensures we are uniquely placed to empower services to deliver parenting interventions tailored to the needs of local communities. We hold parents in high esteem and recognise them as the experts of their families. We work closely with disability teams to build their capacity to improve outcomes for families from the early years right up to adulthood.

Our model of developing tailored parenting interventions in partnership with services and families for services and families means teams are better equipped to work collaboratively with parents to achieve the outcomes they define for their family using our proven programmes, supervision, evaluation and outcome tracking. Our model of reinvesting all profits made from sale of our professional parenting interventions into development of new parenting programmes and in sponsorship of services with limited funding to train in our programmes emphasises our steadfast commitment to working together with services to improve outcomes for families.

This can be seen in our recent work to support disability services. There are more than 22,000 children under 18 living with an intellectual disability in Ireland. For a number of years, disability services were contacting us to develop an evidence-based parenting programme for families raising an adolescent with an intellectual disability, communicating that although they received tailored support during the early years, as the child approaches adolescence, services did not have a proven parenting programme to draw on for this cohort, when challenges and psychological distress are at their highest.

Parents Plus responded to this need by developing the Parents Plus Special Needs Programme, PPSN. PPSN has undergone a randomised controlled trial with the psychology department in Trinity College Dublin, TCD, with impressive results. It was developed in partnership with families and disability services and is designed to be delivered by established disability services to parents in their local communities to empower them to change the outcomes not just of their child with an intellectual disability, but all their family, so they can realise their full potential, belong to, and contribute to an inclusive society, which is a key commitment of CDNTs and UNCRPD.

The urgent need for this programme was brought home by a disability social worker who trained in it and delivers it. She stated:

Our service operate a duty social work [number]. Up until we ran [the programme], parents frequently called the number, pleading for help with their child's challenging behaviour or because they did not know where else to get help ... [W]e had to advise that they contact the guards or present to A & E [with their child]. Fast forward and not one of the parents who attended PPSN has called [the] number ... PPSN is without doubt the solution to the crippling problems that parents of adolescents with an intellectual disability face. Each parent ... talks about it as life changing. All professionals working in disability should be trained in the [programme]. It should be compulsory and offered to every family.

Although we share the successes and the incredible work done to date with disability teams across the country, the issue of inequitable access to proven parenting interventions for parents raising a child with a disability via their local CDNTs is still an issue. Weekly, we are informed of no budgets and services are contacting us, seeking funding from Parents Plus charity to train in and deliver our parenting interventions. We sponsor whom we can, yet our resources are finite. Weekly, parents contact us, highly stressed and seeking signposting to evidence-based parenting interventions being run in their local communities. This is not a criticism of CDNTs; it is just a reality. However, it is a reality that we can work together on to solve and one that Parents Plus charity is committed to helping overcome.

I thank the committee for addressing this important issue. We look forward to answering any questions that members may have.