Ms Mary O'Kelly:

The short answer is that I do not have an update. When we started the pilot, as the Deputy will know, it was a cross-government initiative. My CHO region, encompassing Dublin south, Kildare and west Wicklow, was the pilot site. As the Deputy will know, the pilot comprehended a number of primary schools and secondary schools. We then employed a team comprising some of our own staff via expression of interest and other staff from national recruitment panels. The key stakeholders in the pilot were the NCSE, the local HSE team in the CHO region and what is now the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. When we hired the staff there was not a model for the school inclusion, so the first year was what I would call almost the preplanning stage, whereby this team of occupational therapists and speech and language therapists has to look at international evidence and build a model, with the NCSE really leading in respect of the schools and engagement with the schools, the principals and the board of management. They developed a three-tier model. The committee may have heard a little about that in other sessions. The model was a universal model, which should be applied to everybody regardless of complexity, recognising that, with children with complex needs, the teachers still need a universal level of knowledge and understanding and capacity-building for the classroom. Tier 2 was a more targeted response to children in the classroom.

Tier 3 was for the children who were more complex and that was almost a treatment intervention in a classroom setting. The whole model was based on school inclusion rather than build capacity in the whole of the child's life. That is really appropriate as children spend most of their young lives in school but from a health point of view, such as participation in community scouts, sports, GAA or whatever. How to ride a bike was not included in any of that. The first year was spent in the pre-planning stage, developing the model, getting it into schools and building tier 1. Then tiers 2 and 3 were being introduced. The core of the model was school inclusion, so the NCSE looked to take on the project. We were to exit the project in summer 2020 but Covid hit in March and schools were closed. The model was within the walls of a school. It was not during the summer, during holidays or at Christmas, which is new for clinicians in health because they work all year round. When Covid hit, staff were redeployed as part of the Covid response and then the NCSE took over. So the CHO and the HSE do not participate in the school inclusion model now. The NCSE has built tiers in terms of its own people around the country.