Mr. Ian Power:

We were involved recently in the launch of the ESRI evaluation of the Youthreach programme. One of the interesting things to emerge from it was that young people involved in Youthreach ended up leaving school early because of difficulty with mental health issues and also difficulties with the curriculum and it not suiting their learning style. It is a two-track thing. The Deputy describes it really well. The reforms to the junior cycle curriculum and those planned for the leaving certificate curriculum are really welcome in respect of trying to approach people's different learning styles in different ways. However, as we have also seen in the youth justice system in particular, students leave school early because of the lack of vocational learning opportunities in our second level system. They have to leave school and become an apprentice to access those types of opportunities. Having those earlier and in the formal school setting would be really appropriate.

In addition to the new well-being curriculum, which is very exciting and a great opportunity to increase the type of learning the Deputy is talking about and introduce it earlier, we would endorse the recommendation of the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, IACP, for a pilot for a schools-based counselling programme. One of the things young people tell us is that if they really needed help, they would seek it, which suggests that they are waiting until they get to a crisis before looking for support. Having lower level brief interventions or basic psychology type services within school settings could help us to prevent young people from ever needing to access services such as primary care psychology or at the more acute end in terms of CAMHS. We firmly believe we need to look at the education system. I welcome the committee's examination of this topic because it is multifactorial. As we heard when we discussed the issue of suicide, it is complex and it needs multiple initiatives to be able to address it.

We ran a campaign a couple of years ago called Listening is Helping. It was based on the active listening tips of the Samaritans and aimed to educate children and young people on how to listen to others without trying to fix their problems. Some of the resources we provided in schools were videos of pairs of friends, one of whom was the listener, showing how the listener demonstrated good listening skills. It is about trying to educate our young people to be there for each other. Peer support is a massive help where it is appropriate.