Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly:

We are advocating that priority be given to multidisciplinary teams working in and around schools. These are models that are in other countries and work very well. They are context specific. Each community might need something different in terms of the composition of those teams. Some communities might initially need family outreach workers or family support workers to do the preliminary work to engage the child and the family in collaboration with the school. It is like a team working around the child. Then it is about looking at what services are required. Is it someone to go out and collect the child for school, is attendance an issue or does Mam need support with something? It is that relational piece Ms Heeney was talking about that works really effectively. I mentioned St. Ultan’s school in Cherry Orchard. There are community-based services that are doing some of that already, so there are models we could look at. For us, the most important thing is to prioritise those in order that the educators can focus on literacy and numeracy, which is the other part of the DEIS plan, to make sure they are engaged.