Ms Annette Clarke:

As regards lessons that have been learned, when I read the guidelines I realised that the work Jigsaw has done in County Meath proves that they will work.

However, a great deal of effort and energy went into the past three years of Jigsaw Meath to get it up and running and to integrate the services.

Jigsaw Meath came out of the tragedy in a small town in County Meath where there was a cluster of suicides in 2005 and 2006. I was a guidance counsellor in a school at that time. A number of other suicides occurred also, and there was a great fear that the number of suicides would escalate. The Health Service Executive was wonderful. Its personnel came into the school and helped us. From that day on we knew we could work together in a collaborative way. I was the guidance counsellor and the psychologists were able to work with me to screen out children who were at risk, and I was able to have a direct referral route from the school into the services of the HSE. It all started in 2006, and the project got moving in 2007. It has been developing, and bringing psychologists into the school to consult with staff members has shown that the guidelines will work.

In terms of the way Jigsaw Meath works, we have two essential structures in the schools. We have an adolescent health team, which consists of two pupils, two parents, management of the school, the social, personal and health education, SPHE, teacher, the guidance counsellor, and one or two other teachers or year heads if they are interested and available to take part. That is the overarching group, which does an analysis of what each school needs in terms of mental health and identifying the difficulties. It can then put in place measures which will help a particular school for that particular year. It is self-evaluation in the school. That is at one level. At another level in the school there is a Jigsaw care team. Did I mention that psychologists are on the adolescent health team as well? On the care team, the psychologists come into the school and sit with the teachers, the guidance counsellor, the SPHE teacher and the special needs teachers. They are able to discuss students who have particular difficulties and therefore can obtain consultation and help. That gives the staff confidence. We are able to work together in a professional way and therefore we can decide on the children who need to be referred outside the school or what we can do within the school to help those children. We can bring in the entire staff in terms of making changes and observing or improving on behaviours. It is a whole integrated approach. The psychologist comes into the school and helps the staff. That is what we have found.

When I read the guidelines I could not believe they were so close in many ways. Jigsaw Meath proves that the guidelines will work, but only with resources. Jigsaw Meath is currently working on goodwill. I am working in a voluntary capacity. The schools do not have any extra money. Counselling will be needed more frequently because it is obvious to me that if all the staff are working with the students and identifying students who have problems, those children will need help, but the average teacher does not have time to sit down and give them an hour of their time to discuss issues. The staff try to listen and give them time, but we need more counselling rather than less because the more distress one picks up in the school, the more help is required. Before children are referred out, we need proper evaluations and counselling within the school to see if a student can be helped in place.