Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to discuss with the Taoiseach the School Leavers Ability Project: creating expectations, exploring choices and supporting transitions. Initially, this School Leavers Ability Project started in 2018 and for the following three years it was funded by Pobal. In the past three years it has been funded through the dormant account fund but that funding will be coming to an end in December of this year. A very small team has been set up in Cumas New Ross which has four facilitators who have helped students with a diagnosed disability to transition from school leaving into PLC, post-leaving certificate courses, colleges, day-care services and-or employment. This both assists individuals and their families with an individualised service that supports each of them to make choices for their future.

The team works with mainstream schools in Wexford and they extend it out to special educational schools in the counties of Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny and Carlow, primarily within the community healthcare organisation, CHO 5 area, where possible. Teachers observing their students from Wexford, in the CHO 5 area as well, are primarily responsible for the referrals and have attested to the essential service that it has been over the past four and a half years.

As it stands the service and its team have facilitated 556 individuals, including 339 who have exited the programme successfully by taking employment or going to college and 227 are currently actively being supported. The programme was originally meant to cater for 40 people and that funding has not increased even though the numbers have increased exponentially. The policy context of the programme involves co-ordination of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Transforming Lives report of 2016, the HSE's New Directions policy and the Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities 2015-2024.

A survey was conducted across the stakeholders which included individual users as well as parents and guardians and professionals such as teachers. The comments are unbelievably positive. User comments included: "Put me in touch with employability and supported me to get work"; "Very helpful for discussing options in college and PLCs"; and "Explored options after school and supported me with travel and training". One of the professionals said:

This allows 1:1 time the teachers don't always have the resources to implement. There is a clear gap between school and adult services and the project helps to bridge that gap.

That programme is funded through the Dormant Accounts Fund to the tune of €160,000; that is just to support Wexford. If it were to be rolled out throughout the CH05 area, a proposal has been sent to the office of the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, it would cost in excess of €300,000. The HSE CEO, Bernard Gloster, was in the facility on Monday. He was impressed and I am sure that he will also make a submission. I ask the Taoiseach to support the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, to promote this. Surely, we cannot have an end to this funding given that it is such a specialist service.

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