Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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562. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if she will provide additional hours of special needs assistance to a person (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18371/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Policy on Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) is the responsibility of my colleague, Richard Bruton, T.D., Minister for Education and Skills. I understand that the SNA model operates in primary and secondary schools.

For the pre-school sector, I am delighted to provide details of a new model of supports, funded by my Department, which I recently unveiled and which will support children with a disability to access the free pre-school programme. A new Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) is now available to enable children with disabilities to access and fully participate in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme. The model will deliver seven levels of progressive support, moving from the universal to the targeted, to enable the full inclusion and meaningful participation of children with disabilities in the ECCE Programme. The new model focuses on the developmental level of children with disabilities, their functional ability, their strengths and their needs. It is not an SNA model, but is much more comprehensive, and will not focus on diagnosis, recognising that many children may not have a formal diagnosis at the time of presenting to pre-school.

The main supports offered under the model include:

- A new higher education programme to upskill early years practitioners in inclusive early years care and education. My Department will fund a small capitation increase where service providers employ a graduate from the programme;

- A dedicated website containing comprehensive information resources for parents and providers. Information can be accessed at www.preschoolaccess.ie;

- Advice and support from a team of 50 experts in early years education for children with disabilities;

- A scheme for the provision of specialised equipment, appliances and minor building alterations;

- Therapeutic intervention where this is needed to allow a child enrol, and fully participate in, pre-school; and

- Additional capitation to enable the pre-school leader to buy-in additional support or reduce the staff to child ratio where this is critical to ensuring a child’s participation.

Service providers, in partnership with parents, can now submit applications to Pobal for supports under the AIM model to allow them to plan for pre-school enrolment in September 2016. Further information on AIM can be accessed at www.preschoolaccess.ie.

It will take some time for the model to be fully embedded and to build capacity across the system. In the meantime, there is a commitment that all supports currently available through the HSE and various agencies will remain in place until the model is fully operational. My Department has raised this particular case with the HSE and I will revert to the Deputy as soon as possible.