Ms Rachel O'Connor:

We are a rural DEIS school, so we have both a home school community liaison teacher and a school completion project worker. They are worth their weight in gold at all times, but in particular during the lockdown. The two ladies here, for example, delivered more than 6,000 food hampers to families. They also delivered work to homes and collected work. They remained a physical connection between home and school during lockdown. They break down those important barriers when one is trying to get buy-in from parents and to create a partnership model. It is the home school community liaison teachers and the project workers who link directly to the home and who are invaluable in delivering the ParentsPlus programme. We invest our resources into the home school community liaison and project worker and they deliver the ParentsPlus programme for free to parents online, offering cookery, woodturning, art and gardening. They are breaking down the barriers. If we can break down the barriers between home and school, we can get buy-in from parents and the reach out into the community, which is priceless.