Dr. Siobh?n O'Higgins:

When we work with DEIS schools, it is about working with everybody from the principal to the secretary and janitor. We have done whole-school workshops with everyone in attendance. In one school, 45 people attended an afternoon workshop which was tabled for three hours but went on for four hours, and nobody left. That was good. It involved looking at the issues and assessing how confident they would feel in dealing with those issues if someone disclosed them. It involved considering positive ways to give young people the skills they need to be able to communicate with each other positively. As well as understanding the negatives, one also has to go for the positives. As every young person goes from being a child to being an adult, they want to know how to explore and express their sexuality in safe, mutually enjoyable and consensual ways. All parents want their children to make them grandparents eventually - not now but eventually - and it is a question of how they explore that with their children. It is about working with everybody. It could be about someone telling a secretary that they could not come in the previous day because something happened at home and how they deal with that.