Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Child protection and the implementation of the Stay Safe programme for all children in every primary school are priorities for my Department. The Stay Safe programme, also known as the child abuse prevention programme or CAPP, is a primary school-based approach to the prevention of child abuse. The programme aims to reduce vulnerability to child abuse through the provision of in-service training for teachers, parent education and personal safety education for children at primary school level.

The Stay Safe programme is a four-stage approach to preventing child abuse, involving children's safety education, teacher training, parent education and community awareness. The programme aims to give children the skills necessary to enable them to recognise and resist abuse or victimisation and teaches them that they should always tell of any situation which they find unsafe, upsetting, threatening, dangerous or abusive. Stay Safe is a personal safety skills programme which can be used with primary school children from senior infants to sixth class. It seeks to enhance children's self-protective skills by participating in lessons on safe and unsafe situations, bullying, touches, secrets, telling and strangers.

An initial one-day in-service training seminar on the Stay Safe programme has been provided for all primary schools. Since the programme was introduced, 99.7% of primary schools have participated in this training. At present, based on a sample survey, approximately 80% to 85% of primary schools are teaching the programme to their students, but the percentage may be higher.

It should be recognised that the Stay Safe programme is not mandatory and schools can decide whether to introduce it. However, the central elements of the programme, primarily personal safety strategies and, more importantly, the overall issue of child protection, are now taught as integral parts of the subject of social, personal and health education, SPHE, which is part of the curriculum taught in every primary school. Specifically, the strand unit entitled "safety and protection" provides material for teachers to explore with children appropriate strategies in personal safety which incorporate elements of the Stay Safe programme. In addition, the implementation of my Department's child protection guidelines for all primary schools has given an additional impetus to the stay safe programme as well as the overall issue of child protection.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

It is a priority of my Department to ensure that a high level of awareness and the necessary skills to address child protection issues, which includes the implementation of the Stay Safe programme, is maintained in all schools. For this reason, my Department will continue to support the promotion of child protection within the context of the social, personal and health education curriculum.

The current high level of take-up of the stay safe programme, combined with the implementation of my Department's child protection guidelines and the incorporation of the central elements of the programme, and in addition to the coverage of the overall issue of child protection within SPHE is very positive. However, I strongly encourage all schools to use the stay safe programme.

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