Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. I have read the press releases in respect of speech and language therapy, and occupational therapy. They are extremely welcome. I want to seek a comment from the Minister on what we determine as special needs. In the areas and schools that I most represent sometimes those special needs come in the form of trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, or behavioural difficulties due to the social environment. These are sometimes separated as if these are problematic students rather than actually displaying behaviours based on the conditions in which they are living.

These students often end up in resource classes. A diversity of students end up in those resource classes. Some of them have diagnoses for autistic spectrum disorders, ASD, and different learning difficulties. There are, however, also students who are experiencing similar difficulties in school but do not necessarily come under that diagnosis. What will be the role of the occupational therapists at primary and pre-school levels? I am not sure if it will be at secondary level as well. Will they look at the holistic needs of the students in respect of mental health and how that is impacting their school? I recently spent the morning in Linn Dara school with students who are not in mainstream school any more. They spoke very passionately about their negative experience of school. I understand that schools are not resourced or trained to a level needed to deal with the level of difficulty that can be found in the classroom. There are so many different needs.

How can we piece all of this together so that we can meet such a diverse range of needs within the mainstream school? My own daughter went through secondary school with high anxiety. That resulted in many mental health issues. It was mentioned earlier that we do not want to be diagnosing people. However, the diagnosis that we ended up with in the end possibly saved her life. She is on the autistic spectrum. We got that diagnosis after she had endured what felt like five hellish years in a school system that she did not understand. She could not fit in or meet the requirements made of her in the classroom setting. Schools such as the one my daughter went to are underresourced in respect of being able to send children for educational psychology assessments as well as to occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. How can we increase the number of educational assessments of needs in children in such schools so that we can figure out the needs?

We do not want to diagnose everybody, but in some cases a diagnosis can actually improve the experience of that child within school. My daughter is now in Trinity College Dublin. She feels a great difference in disability service provision and what is being provided for her in respect of accommodation and being able to sit her exams on her own. If something as simple as that had been provided in the school system it would have made a massive difference to her performance during exam time. She now gets to sit in a room on her own without those small distractions that would sometimes distract people on the spectrum.

On the recognition of special needs resource requirements for kids with dyscalculia - I have brought this up with the Minister, Deputy Bruton in the past - I feel it is something that is not getting much attention in the same way as dyslexia does. We have a cohort of children in school that have a disability with mathematics. It is not about how it is being taught to them. It is not about their ability or how much work they have put into it. It is an actual disability. It is standing in the way of their progression into third level education because it is not being recognised to the same standard as dyslexia in respect of mathematics waivers at the leaving certificate.

Trinity College Dublin has a mathematics waiver, which is what allowed my daughter to go to college, but not all universities have mathematics waivers. To get a mathematics waiver, an educational psychological assessment is needed. If these were more available in some of the schools that do not have much resources - or the families do not have many resources - then we would see a much higher progression rate to third level, as indeed we would if we could recognise all the invisible disabilities that exist within second level education.

It is very important that we support children so that they are able to stay in mainstream school. However, there is a gap when they leave school. If they do not go to university, further education institutes do not have the same supports as the university sector. I was alerted recently to a girl who had been accepted into Ballyfermot College of Further Education. She has a disability. When she tried to follow the next step in her education, she was told that the college was not required to meet the needs she had to allow her to study there. In respect of further education, we can get children up to the point where they are 18 but we need to be able to enable progression into further education. The university sector does quite well in respect of having resources for dealing with disabilities. Community colleges, however, are not in that position.

In respect of the units - I do not like calling them that - I am currently working on a very alarming case. I will be in contact with the Minister, Deputy Bruton, when I have gathered the full evidence. A child in Cork or Limerick - I will have to doublecheck my notes - has been sent home from a school unit. There are only two children in that unit. I think it can cater for up to ten children. I will have to check my notes on that again. The unit said that it could not meet that child's requirements. It is a whole unit working with only two children. It should have the ability to work with many more children.

The unit told the mother that the child was not to come back to the special unit until he was medicated. These are teaching professionals and special needs professionals nearly forcing a parent to medicate her child so he would be able to come back to the unit. I wonder about the consistency across all the training in respect of people working in that area. There is much amazing work being done but there are also gaps and we are failing many children. This young boy, who is at the early stage of second level, cannot even access one of the units. What stuck me was that this unit cannot meet his needs when it is not even at full capacity.I wonder how it could meet the needs of all the children if it was at full capacity. I wonder how much we are supporting the special needs units in carrying out their functions for kids that need extra support.

The Joint Committee on Education and Skills yesterday heard submissions on something I was unaware of. The discussion concerned sex education. Inclusion Ireland came before the committee to talk about people with intellectual disabilities and how the education system is impacting them. I was not aware that children in special schools with intellectual disabilities are taught at primary level right up to the age of 18. We have not even reformed the education system to recognise that young people with intellectual disabilities are not eternal children. They are going through teenage years and going into adolescence. They would like to potentially have relationships, go into the workforce or live with some independence. I wonder if this is an area the Minister has looked at when considering special education. We have special schools that are teaching at primary level right up to when the child is 18. We should create a system that allows children with special needs to go through the same age-appropriate education that kids in mainstream schools do, so that they have some chance to be at par with their peers when they eventually leave school or go into third level or further education.