Dr. P?draig MacNeela:

We are promoting that. We have to move away from the idea of a single teacher being a lone voice. In higher education, the counsellors and psychotherapists are the people who give a sense of security such that we can push on and do some of the education with the young people, because we know there is support and people who are professionally qualified to give these. This is essential. It is a confidence-building measure and it enables schools to feel they are covered. As much as people want to endorse the positive learning of young people, schools will worry about the issues of trauma, the retraumatisation that can occur and difficult issues coming up. This is currently a barrier. Once we have the professionals and practitioners in question in place, it will be facilitatory. It is essential.

We see from the college experience that the practitioners often feel very overburdened. Many of them do our one-semester professional development module, a level 9 module that we offer. I am always struck by the sense of personal responsibility among people who come to us and work with us, in addition to the burden based on the fact that they cannot unknow what they have come to know. They often take on too much. Those people themselves need to be in support networks and have outlets and professional supervision. Just because one is a mental health practitioner does not mean one is also equipped to work in the area of sexual trauma. Therefore, the practitioners will need additional training. This points to pathways and the question of how it will be achieved by way of bite-size chunks and in-work learning that could be accredited and validated. There are several ways. Universities know how to achieve these ends but, again, it would require additional resources to put the infrastructure in place.