Professor Paul Downes:

It goes back to Dr. O'Reilly's point. If you have a clear phase 1 indicated prevention, one-to-one stuff, that is the pilot project, which is separate in some way. A phase 2 will ask towards where we will evolve and for what other multidisciplinary members are we looking? Ms Stockham spoke about the whole-class stuff where you have the external team member coming in to talk to the class. Our research for the European Commission would say that the social and emotional development-related issues are better done by the teacher and by upskilling the teacher, rather than an external professional coming in. There could be an interesting debate around whole-class level. Much of the research, including that on bullying, would say that should be the teacher's role, not that of an external professional. The day of the external professional coming in to give the talk are somewhat over. It is about upskilling the teacher for the universal, whole-class level.

What is most interesting about the Dorset model is the moderate-risk group and the group-based approaches. There may be particular strategies in the group-based model that could work. But I go back and invite the committee to visit FamiliBase in Ballyfermot. It is just down the road. It has had youth work and social care workers, that is, the other layers of professionals, going into the homes. The family support dimension is a key neglected area of bullying. Deputy Conway-Walsh asked earlier about neglected areas of research. There are immense studies internationally on family dimensions to bullying that may be manifested in school but do we have a strategy around that in Ireland? Arguably we do not and that is as well as the dearth of community strategy around bullying. I would argue that yes, our phase 2 of the multidisciplinary teams needs to look at youth workers and social care workers - I would argue the latter at primary school and the former in secondary school - and then there is the question of how you integrate them with the home-school liaison teacher and speech and language therapist. That is a whole task in itself. That takes time and requires professional competence. It is a drawn-out thing. There are territories there. That second layer is where we need to evolve towards. As for the question of whether there are particular members of the Dorset team who offer a distinct role, such as the nurses, we mentioned before that in France and Finland, they have nurses in schools. The nurse angle is a particularly interesting one that I would invite the committee to really scrutinise.