Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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1088. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the factors that determine the allocation of educational welfare officers to a school geographical area; and the number of educational welfare officers assigned per school geographical area. [3219/20]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Tusla Education Support Service (TESS) has provided my department with the table attached below identifying the five different regions and number of Education Welfare Officers (EWO) in each region.

The aims and objectives of this statutory service are to ensure that every child either attends school regularly or otherwise receives a minimum education; to ensure and secure every child’s entitlement to education. Educational Welfare Officers work with families and children in a child-centred way to overcome barriers to their school attendance, participation and retention; and work closely with schools, educational support services and other agencies to support school attendance and resolve attendance problems for the benefit of children and families.

Where a school principal has a concern in relation to a pupil’s school attendance and where the school has made all local efforts to resolve the problem and the school still remains concerned about the student’s attendance a referral can be made to the Educational Welfare

Service ( EWS).

When referrals are received by the EWS team they are screened by a Senior Educational Welfare Officer. Referrals are then placed in priority order and are assigned to the EWO team accordingly.

PQ 3219/20, for answer 05/03/2020, Written from - Róisín Shortall

To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the factors that determine the allocation of educational welfare officers to a school geographical area; and the number of educational welfare officers assigned per school geographical area.

Please see below the TESS response to the above PQ,

Tusla Educational Welfare Service is divided into 5 regions as follows,

There are currently the following number of Educational Welfare Officers (EWOs) in each region,

The aims and objectives of this statutory service are to ensure that every child either attends school regularly or otherwise receives a minimum education; to ensure and secure every child’s entitlement to education. Educational Welfare Officers work with families and children in a child-centred way to overcome barriers to their school attendance, participation and retention; and work closely with schools, educational support services and other agencies to support school attendance and resolve attendance problems for the benefit of children and families.

Where a school principal has a concern in relation to a pupil’s school attendance and where the school has made all local efforts to resolve the problem and the school still remains concerned about the student’s attendance a referral can be made to EWS. The school will be asked to document interventions already made in line with their School Attendance Strategies. DEIS schools will also be asked to document the additional interventions made by HSCL and SCP.

When referrals are received by the EWS team they are screened by a Senior Educational Welfare Officer. If a referral is incomplete the referral will be returned to the school seeking further information. All completed referrals are placed in priority order and are assigned to the EWO team accordingly. At any stage a principal can follow up with the EWS to ascertain the status of a referral.

The Regional Manager for each area assigns EWOs to schools based on the number of referrals received for an area. This is done a regular basis to maximise delivery of service and to effectively use resources.