Ms Bernie McNally:

We do not call them special needs assistants because we are taking a different approach from that in the primary school system. AIM is about identifying a child's needs and the setting needs and there are seven layers of support. The final level of support is to reduce the ratio in the pre-school room. The pre-school leader rather than a person with a lesser qualification may end up working with the child. We may facilitate an additional adult in the room to assist the leader spend more time with the child who has needs, etc., such that there could be two similarly qualified people in the room. We appreciate that staffing issues are being experienced around the country and that the difficulty in accessing staff is an issue and is impacting on AIM but we have made that funding available. Over 2,000 children accessed supports to have an additional adult in the room last year and we are continuing to work very actively on implementing that and addressing the staffing issue which we know exists.