Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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1184. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the maximum amount of capital funding available for schools who wish to re-configure existing spaces within the school building to accommodate nurture groups in schools or to construct additional accommodation, such as a nurture room; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43025/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Nurture Groups are short-term focused interventions for children and young people with social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties. They emphasise emotional literacy, language development, and positive relationships and are based on attachment theory and draw on trauma-informed practices. Nurture Groups involve small groups of children temporarily withdrawn from mainstream classes to develop specific skills. Many variations of Nurture interventions are used, and some schools also use Nurture principles and implement whole-school approaches to Nurture.

Nurture Groups are often referred to as Nurture Rooms possibly because of a confusion about the terminology but also possibly because many of them are part time and therefore the emphasis is sometimes on the room rather than the group dynamic.

Because of the many variations of Nurture groups and ancillary accommodation that schools can avail of we do not have an accommodation type defined as a nurture room.

As Nurture is a programme of support whose interventions need to be embedded in the school’s Continuum of Support process, there is advice for schools in Circulars 0042/2018 and 0043/2018 in the use of programmes and/or external facilitators in promoting wellbeing consistent with the Department of Education and Youth’s Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice.

My Department does not provide dedicated accommodation for Nurture Groups.