Mr. Enda McGorman:

I thank the committee for the invitation to address it on this important issue.

As the principal of a large school in Littlepace, Dublin 15 - a co-educational senior primary school with 428 pupils - I am acutely aware of the increasing levels of emotional ill health, including anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and depression, among children in primary schools. It is clear that these problems have escalated considerably since the pandemic.

My staff and myself, the vast majority of whom are parents, do our utmost to care for and help these children but we are not experts; we are not psychologists and we are not mental health professionals, and that is the type of help many of our pupils need. The services providing mental health support to children, while excellent when we can access them, are completely inadequate and understaffed. Children are suffering and getting worse the longer they must wait for expert help. This must change. The way I see it, a number of key areas must be addressed as a matter of urgency. The first is the provision of supports to help children to access learning. The second is the reduction in long waiting lists and waiting times to access external support services. The third is to increase capacity for early intervention. Above all, there needs to be joined-up thinking.

I am a member of the Irish Primary Principals' Network and I am representing it today. I echo the calls in the IPPN submission for a seamless, integrated approach across health and education and for teams of health and education professionals to work with school clusters and individual schools to support children directly in the schools where they learn. Sufficient capacity and timely access to supports for children are key, while training and support to develop a culture of well-being in schools are also needed.

While the pandemic has made things worse, it is not as though things were great before March 2020. We have children who are bereaved or whose family unit has fallen apart due to addiction, mental ill health or divorce and separation. There are children who are homeless, who are living in direct provision or who have fled war-torn countries. My school has supported children in all of these scenarios. Some of those children have experienced several of these adverse childhood experiences and traumas simultaneously.

However, there are times when the needs of these children lie far beyond that which schools alone can provide. This is the point where external support is needed and, too often, it is the point where children are failed. We know that for children who are experiencing mental health issues, early and appropriate intervention works. Delays in service provision have a very damaging effect on those experiencing mental health difficulties, their families, communities, schools and other State services. Children with mental health difficulties cannot afford to wait. Invariably, the longer the wait, the more entrenched the problem becomes.

Why is this happening? First, there are acute recruitment challenges across a range of services, including the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, children's disability network teams, CDNTs, and Tusla. The longer it takes to fully staff these services, the worse the outcomes for these vulnerable children will be. This is urgent and the system needs to do better.

Waiting lists are another issue. Our understanding is that waiting lists for services such as CAMHS, which were already overstretched in 2020, have increased by almost half. In fact, in our experience, a significant proportion of referrals to CAMHS do not even meet the criteria to be placed on a waiting list so many children are left with nothing.

In schools, there can be issues regarding what we call "behaviours of concern" in classrooms and school yards and these behaviours can be severe for the children in question and those around them. Schools struggle to manage cases of extreme behaviour due in part to a lack of relevant training as well as capacity issues in the support services such as the National Behaviour Support Service, NBSS. Managing the behaviour becomes the focus and the cause of the behaviour is not addressed as schools and parents do not have access to the professional supports or guidance needed for the child. Early intervention is essential. It is our assertion that the services provided under the Departments of Health and Education are completely separate, disjointed and without linkage between the services provided by either Department and with little or no communication about the children accessing the services.

The IPPN has made five recommendations, which are detailed in the submission. Let us develop a culture of well-being, ensure seamless support from health and education, form teams of health and education professionals, provide appropriate and timely training and pilot approaches to support children's mental health. The IPPN believes these recommendations would go a long way to addressing the current shortcomings and alleviate the suffering of children and we urge the committee to consider them.