Ms Caroline Walker-Strong:

We are advocating that a social worker be attached to those special schools to act in that role. Ms McGrory can speak a little bit more about it because she is actively working in that role, as a contact person. That is true of the CDNT network as well, where parents have one person that they can phone if they cannot remember the name of the lady who is providing speech and language, for example. If they only have to remember one name, it just reduces the battle a little bit for them. Ms McGrory spoke earlier about producing a list for parents comprised of the names of the professionals, what they are doing and the day their child is going to see them.

In terms of bringing it back into schools, that is part of the UN model for inclusive education so that a child is not seen to be taken off somewhere else to go do something but is in the classroom.

We have spoken today around how some of those interventions will not just help the child at whom they are targeted, but will help the whole class to learn around a new way of communicating, around accepting diversity and around accepting that there are different ways to communicate. One of the challenges we have spoken about at length today is around the resourcing of things. Part of the reason things are a battle for parents is because the resources are scant and are scattered. It is about bringing those multidisciplinary teams back into schools so that parents know, if their child has additional needs, they are sending them off to school in the morning and they are getting what they require within their school day, which then reduces the stresses at home. Ideally, it would be in their local community so they are not having big long bus journeys to somewhere else outside the community and then they do not have friends within their community as they are all based in the school that is far away. Bringing all of that back into the local school environment really is the ideal; not just for the students, but also for their families.

I will pass over to Ms McGrory who may talk more around the model in which she is working in the special schools in Donegal where there is a multidisciplinary team in place and it works really well for the families. They have Ms McGrory as a resource available to them. She links them in with her multidisciplinary team within the school. The child is accessing their education. It is that one-stop shop type model. It would be great to see that being rolled out on a wider scale.