Mr. Brendan Doody:

I will reference the school inclusion model, SIM, if that is okay, and then talk about the behaviour guidelines. The Deputy is right to say there are huge challenges for young people associated with having to travel significant distances. It highlights for us the importance of building the capacity of all schools to meet the needs of children with more complex education needs. That is the fundamental principle upon which the SIM programme is based. The SIM is about developing teacher capacity. It is about including all students in school provision. It is operating, as the Deputy knows, on a pilot basis in 75 schools in CHO 7. The concept or notion of scaling it to national level is one we are exploring. As recently as yesterday afternoon I had a meeting with the NCSE around this. However, there is a huge contextual piece for us in that, namely, we simply do not have a ready-made supply of language therapists, occupational therapists, OTs, or psychologists to fulfil what would be required were we to scale it up to national level. That is not unique to Ireland, by the way. I am on the board of the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education and at a recent meeting it was the topic of discussion for every country. Therapists simply do not exist in the numbers we would want.

The notion of scaling the SIM to national level in order to build the capacity of schools and teachers is certainly on our agenda and something we would like to develop, but it is going to take time. As our colleagues from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth were talking about, there is work going on in respect of building the workforce in that area, so it is not going to happen in the immediate future. In the meantime, the NCSE held a showcase event for schools that are participating in the SIM in Naas a while back. It showed how positive an intervention it is when schools feel they are building their capacity to meet the needs of children from a more informed perspective. It is not that speech and language therapists, SLTs, and OTs have all the answers, but it is that notion of collaborative engagement and building the capacity of teachers. That is what we want from that work.

On the behaviour guidance, everything the Department has done over many years in respect of behaviour has been situated in supporting positive behaviour, developing school culture and a positive school climate. Though they are dated, if one goes back all the way, the 2008 guidelines on codes of behaviour are situated in that space. They are currently being updated by Tusla's education support service, but all the other materials and documents that have been put out into the system, including the NEPS guidelines on students with emotional and behaviour difficulties and the well-being framework, are all located in that area of positive engagement and developing school culture. Early intervention has been really important.

We recognise there are circumstances where, everything else having been tried, some situations will require an intervention as a measure of last resort. The Deputy mentioned seclusion and restraint. We have guidelines almost ready to go. We had a stakeholder consultation on the guidelines last week. It was a positive engagement.

An enormous amount of work has gone into the development of the guidelines. We have involved schools in that process. We have involved school principals working in special schools and in mainstream contexts and so on, in respect of the guidelines and their views around these issues. We are very clear that seclusion is not an appropriate measure in any circumstance and that will be made very clear in the guidelines when they are published. Under no circumstances should schools use seclusion as a measure or as an intervention to manage behaviour. It is always negative and should therefore never, ever be used. However, there is differentiation between seclusion and a student who might seek to have a period away from a class. The student might recognise their own triggers, for example, and with an SNA or they may have developed their own capacity in that space, they recognise that they need to go to a sensory room or into the corner of the classroom just to take, and I am loath to use the words "time out" but the concept is stepping away from what is live for them at that moment. That differentiation is made clearly in the guidelines.

Obviously, in an ideal world we would not need guidelines on restraint. We recognise that as a measure of very last resort, a restraint will sometimes be needed. I happened to be in Kilkenny Castle last week on my way back from Waterford and I saw a mother very calmly and very successfully restrain her 15- or 16-year-old son who may have had some special needs. She restrained him very competently, de-escalated the situation and ensured that the young person was calmed. That is the type of intervention that is required. There are times when, if there is imminent danger to the student or to those working in the school, it is necessary to apply a restraint. We are really conscious of the fact that we are developing guidelines and will make those available to the system but we also recognise that simply putting those guidelines out into the system is not really sufficient. For the small number of occasions when schools will have to use those guidelines, they need training. We are engaging with the NCSE on developing elements of training. The first level of that is obviously awareness and we will support schools, and maybe special schools in particular, because they are the schools that are telling us most that they need these supports. They are saying they need them now and not next year. We will have engagement with special and mainstream schools to develop awareness of the guidelines and then we will need to train them. We will be securing a training support service for schools in managing those particular circumstances and how and when to apply a restraint. Then the guidelines make it very clear what you have to do when you have had to apply a restraint, and how you reflect on the situation. There are templates to complete at the level of the school which are all designed to try to ensure the teachers will reflect on what caused the situation, what the trigger was, whether there were things they need to amend, or supports they need to provide differently, and so on and so forth. There is a lot of work done by the expert group that has developed this. The Deputy is right that it was commissioned in 2019 but unfortunately Covid-19 intervened with an awful lot of things, this included. However, the group is very nearly there at this point. I would hope that certainly by early in the next school year we will have them published along with the training plan.