Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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66. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will consider funding trainee educational and child psychologists in the same way that their trainee counselling psychologist colleagues are; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49973/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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You will be aware that the psychological service of my Department, NEPS, provides a much valued service to all primary and post-primary schools. The service provided by NEPS is broad, and encompasses a model that seeks to strengthen the overall capacity of the system to support the wellbeing, participation and inclusion of all children and young people in our schools, but particularly for those with special educational needs. Our psychologists work with teachers, parents and children/young people in schools to provide a range of services as follows:

- Psychologists support schools to identify and respond to need, through regular planning and review meetings.

- They provide support to schools in the event of a Critical Incident.

- They provide a school staff Support and Development Service, which supports school staff in their work. This might include, for example, training staff in the provision of trauma informed school approaches, or in the provision of evidence-based programmes to strengthen resilience and reduce anxiety. This broad service is provided to an estimated 25,000 school staff annually.

- Psychologists also provide an individual casework service for children and young people, and this is a much valued element of their work in schools. This is where the focus of the work is on individual students, and the psychologist meets school staff, parents and the student themselves, in order to identify and assess student strengths and needs and agree on an appropriate plan of intervention and review. In these cases, NEPS psychologists always provide a written report for parents and the school principal. In 2021, the NEPS casework service extended to over 8500 students. Additionally, under the Scheme for Commissioning Psychological Assessments (SCPA) process, private psychologists provided assessment to schools for over 900 students.

My Department has established a high-level working group, chaired by the Secretary General, to examine how the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) can nest continue to recruit adequate numbers of suitably qualified staff and continue to respond to the educational psychological needs of children in primary and post-primary schools across the country.

The group has agreed on a number of actions that must be taken to address supply issues in the medium to long term. These include the development of a workforce plan for educational psychologists within the Department of Education and work has begun with other Government Departments to advance this.

A number of options were considered to address some immediate supply issues. Following analysis of these, it was decided that the Department would use some available NEPS funding to sponsor a cohort of third year students of the Educational Psychology Doctoral programme in University College Dublin (UCD) and Mary Immaculate College (MIC) University of Limerick, for the academic year 2022/23 by providing a contribution towards their fees and associated expenses. The workforce planning group referred to above will be asked to make some interim recommendations in Q2 of next year regarding any other short-term measures required in advance of their final report. It is envisaged that funding supports for students on the educational psychological doctorate programme will be considered as part of this process.

In the interim, given the particular time pressures for students in third year of the programme, interviews will be held in the coming months to provide financial support to those students of Educational Psychology, currently on training placements in NEPS who are due to complete their doctoral training programme in 2023. Details will be made available in the coming weeks.