Professor Paul Downes:

First, I congratulate the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, on the considerably progressive announcement of the specialist counsellors in primary schools. Second, I will thank and commend this committee for its immense work in driving this issue forward and acknowledge your commitment, Chair, to this issue. Having said that, there is a glaring gap and system absurdity in what has been announced in that secondary schools will not be included in the specialist counselling national pilot. We now have a situation in Ireland in which primary schools will have specialist emotional counsellors on site in schools. Third level routinely has such a service for many years and, yet, the most vulnerable group of adolescents are missing out on this specialist service. In some ways, what has been announced is an Irish solution to an Irish problem that solves nothing for Irish teenagers in society today.

Early intervention does not just mean intervention for youngest groups. It means at the beginning or early stages of a problem which may be manifested at secondary school level. The terminology of early intervention needs to be understood as meaning intervention for adolescents also. It is clear that guidance counsellors are not at the area of trauma and adverse childhood experiences. Let us be clear that the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, is not offering one-to-one specialist emotional counselling services. This is a system gap at second level that needs to be firmly addressed. We cannot wait for a pilot to happen. There is too much urgency to wait for the results of a primary school pilot for secondary school.

With regard to another major issue, I propose to the committee an implementation structure that is in some way ready-made at area level for the specialist counselling service, that is, to look at the local area partnerships in conjunction with schools and the local-area-based childhood programmes and family resource centres. These are obvious area-wide structures that can be used to implement the primary school pilot. I urge that the pilot be one in which the Department has not just contracted in rotated specialist counsellors. The counsellors need to be imbedded in one to two schools, at most, in order that they are not wasting time travelling between schools. An area-wide team of counsellors is needed, with a head of team that is led by a counsellor, which can also see the wider family perspectives. There may be issues that involve siblings in different schools. An area-wide based counselling team which would have clinical supervision with regard to a supervisor who could be structured at a regional level is needed. A local-area-based structure would be an optimal approach for this.

In the submission, we quoted the national project manager for the area-based childhood programme, Ms Bernie Laverty. She endorses the idea that the area-based childhood programmes, ABCs, could be a key site for linking this in conjunction with schools. I also quoted two area-based partnerships: the Northside Partnership in the Coolock-Darndale area and the Dublin Northwest Partnership. The CEO in the latter has also endorsed the area partnerships. The area partnerships are a national structure throughout Ireland. They are a very natural structure to lead a consortium bid in conjunctions with schools whereby schools would show they had space for in the school for the specialist emotional counsellors. The proposal is to have a team of four counsellors that would go across eight primary schools and have a head of team. They would all be counsellors. Let us be clear this would be a counsellor team and would not diffuse focus into other areas.

In our report for the European Commission a decade ago, Professor Anne Edwards, then head of research at Oxford University's school of education, and I emphasised the notion of going beyond endless chains of referrals. The phrase that was used was, "passing on bits of the child". We want to avoid that type of situation. I call it "referral-itis". Having the direct-delivery support of the specialist counsellors in schools at second level and primary school with an area-based structure of a team is the way in which I recommend the committee go to implement the national pilot.