Mr. Jim Mulkerrins:

There are three separate questions there and I will have to bounce some of this back to Ms Carr because the main provider of assessments is the HSE. However, we have a National Educational Psychological Service. Its function is not to provide assessments but to upskill and support schools and to ensure that they are supporting children within the schools as well as they possibly can. We are conscious of the long delays that have been there for assessments historically and we have been engaging with our colleagues in the Department of Health, the HSE and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, in a cross-sectoral format on a very regular basis about this. Back as far as 2012, we engaged with the National Disability Authority, NDA, and it was telling us at the time that assessments just for educational supports were costing the equivalent of in excess of 75 whole-time equivalent psychologists across the State. We took the view that that was wasteful because it is better that our therapists and practitioners are providing services rather than assessing for services. We were proactive about this and the committee will be aware that we introduced a new resource teacher allocation model in September 2017, which removed the need for an assessment in order that resources would be provided. In the past, a child had to have an assessed disability before additional teaching hours were provided but that is no longer the case.

The special needs assistant, SNA, review I mentioned in my presentation contains similar recommendations. Hopefully, if these recommendations are accepted and implemented by Government in the future, it will no longer be necessary for children to have an assessment of need before they can access SNA-type support. I am conscious that that review also had a number of other recommendations which primarily all blend together to ensure that in future children will get the right support from the right person and at the right time. In order that that would happen the over-reliance of the assessment of need process will be discontinued or rolled down. We know, of course, that children will continue to need assessment for clinical reasons and perhaps to guide the professionals and practitioners in understanding the levels of support and the types of needs that children have.

On speech and language therapy, we are very conscious, that while the Department of Education and Skills is not currently the provider of speech and language therapy services, there is a commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government to develop an in-school approach and language support service to ensure that children can get access when and as they need support. To that end, from this September, in collaboration with our colleagues in the Department of Health and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, we will roll out a pilot project across CHO 7, involving 76 schools, including a number of special schools, and 76 preschools, where therapy services will be delivered in school in line with the continuum of support service - a high level of support for the higher level of need; a middle level of support for the middle level of need and a whole school approach to children to try to identify and deal with needs as they first arise in order to try to prevent them from getting worse, so to speak.

That pilot is being rolled out in on a collaborative basis. We work on a very regular basis with our colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that the need for clinical governance and clinical support for therapists currently being recruited for this particular pilot will be available. The HSE will do the recruitment process for us and the NCSE will manage the programme for us. This heralds a new era of enhanced co-operation and collaboration between our Departments to ensure that children get access to supports without having to wait years for assessments.

The National Council for Special Education, NCSE, will manage the programme. This heralds a new era of enhanced co-operation and collaboration between our Departments to ensure children get access to supports without having to wait for years for assessments. I accept this will take some time. The pilot will run from September to the end of the school year and then we will work towards delivering a nationwide project, assuming that the evaluation of the pilot tells us it is positive.