Ms Lucinda Murrihy:

The Senator asked about the barriers to inclusion in mainstream. There are lots of schools - a couple here today - that are making enormous efforts to be inclusive but we hear from families whose children experience exclusion or are not necessarily understood at school when they are trying to communicate through behaviour and are facing unfair barriers such as not receiving their right to reasonable accommodations.

One of the things we in Inclusion Ireland are really concerned about is that the voices of these children are not heard and one of the main reasons for this is because of the way we have the schools complaints process set up at the moment. We are encouraging children and families to complain only to schools and those messages are not getting beyond some schools. The process is quite biased and it is also putting families through a system and quite a long process. Many families are traumatised with the experiences of their children. We are talking about children who are so anxious they cannot access school. They are experiencing school avoidance and they do not feel safe in the school environment. Because of the way we have the schools complaints process set up at the moment, those voices are not getting heard beyond schools, and unless families go through that entirely long drawn-out process and that is completed, they cannot complain to the Ombudsman for Children. That system is set-up to silence children and we really need to look at that.