Dr. Niall Muldoon:

To reiterate, my understanding of the English model - and the committee has heard from professionals involved in it - is that a team is created to work with a cluster of schools. In the example referenced, the cluster consisted of ten schools. A team of four or five professionals engage with those schools throughout the different levels. This creates opportunities for the children to learn about mental health in its widest sense and to do peer work and group work together on mental health and emotional well-being. It also creates opportunities for the parents and the teachers to learn about it. It upskills everybody within the education system around mental health. The children who need direct support have access to a clinical psychologist or a counsellor of some form. I think eight to ten sessions are provided, on average, and mild to moderate mental health issues are looked at. It could be that a child is upset because his or her parents are separating or he or she has just lost a grandparent. I am referring to issues that are not serious that could turn into something more serious. In the area where the model has been implemented, they have found that within one year they have been able to work with more than 1,000 children. Many of those children were previously already waiting for long periods to time to get into CAMHS settings. There is research and backup evidence on the English model. It has worked extremely well across Departments. It has to be the model we start to build here. It does not have to be exactly the same here, but it has to be the model we start to look at recreating in an Irish setting.

It is very concerning, as Senator Flynn noted, that so few Travellers make it as far as the end of secondary school, never mind on to university. I think that is part of what we need to do. We must create that self-esteem that we talk about in primary school, and the children's holistic understanding of themselves and the ability to dream bigger. I have seen many children from Traveller backgrounds who are very bright. Our teachers are sometimes not able to see it. They are working from old templates, according to which every Traveller goes in a certain direction, gets married early and leaves education. There are a lot more younger children coming through who want to complete their education and are being supported by their parents from within the Travelling community to do that. A lot of change is needed, from that point of view, to get more young people from Traveller backgrounds into university. It is our education system that has to adapt to these young people. I have spoken to one or two young girls of 14 or 15 years of age. They told me that because their older sisters got married at 16, the teachers were not willing to work with them and would only give them a certain amount of time because it was felt they would be gone soon. We need to change that old-fashioned thinking. It is not everywhere, but it is something we need to work on. Hopefully, it is an issue on which we will see progress being made in the future.