Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The area of wellbeing and the promotion of positive mental health is a priority for the Department of Education and Youth. This includes promoting emotional wellbeing and resilience and positive coping skills, which support children and young people to manage the complexities of modern life.

The department’s approach to supporting wellbeing and mental health is set out in its Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice which can be found at the following link Wellbeing in education (www.gov.ie) and informs the department’s extensive and ongoing work in the area of student wellbeing. The departments approach is founded on research and best international practice of how schools can best support the wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. The approach proposed is a whole school and preventative approach which has multiple components that include:

- Providing children and young people with opportunities to build core social and emotional skills and competencies

- Providing children and young people with opportunities to experience supportive relationships within the school setting and to learn through those relationships

- Providing children and young people with opportunities to be part of a school environment and culture that feels both physically and psychologically safe

- Schools are encouraged to develop policies that create an environment in which children and young people feel a sense of belonging and connectedness, in which they feel their voice is heard, and they feel supported.

- Schools are encouraged to use a reflective, school self-evaluation approach to identify and prioritise the needs of its own school community in relation to the promotion of wellbeing and mental health, and to respond to meeting those needs.

Policy implementation responsibility is coordinated by the Wellbeing Office which is situated within the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS).

The Department’s Wellbeing Office has initiated a Policy and Implementation Plan Review to plan for the next school wellbeing strategy once the current implementation Plan completes in 2025. A broader stakeholder engagement process will take place to consult on a successor Wellbeing in Education Policy and Implementation Plan post 2025 which will inform the priorities when we produce an updated strategy incorporating the continued, adapted, or new areas of agreed focus in educational wellbeing. Department officials will advertise this review on gov.ie and will communicate with stakeholders in coming months to include them in the consultation process, that will lead to the new Wellbeing Policy and Implementation Plan going forward.

Policy implementation responsibility is coordinated by the Wellbeing Office which is situated within the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS).

The National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides educational psychological support to all primary and post-primary and special schools. The NEPS service provides access for all schools to:

• Psychological support in the event of a Critical Incident
• A Casework Service for individual children where there is a need for intensive consultation and assessment via a NEPS psychologist or through the Scheme for the Commissioning of Psychological Assessments (SCPA) and
• Ongoing access to advice and support for schools.

NEPS teams offer training and guidance for teachers in the provision of universal and targeted evidence-informed approaches and early intervention to promote children’s wellbeing, social, emotional and academic development.

The following programmes of support are delivered to schools by NEPS nationally:

- FRIENDS Resilience: The evidence-based anxiety prevention and resilience building programmes for all schools. Over 1000 teachers have been trained each year by NEPS.

- Student Support Teams: Training and implementation support for post primary schools to review and develop their systems to support the wellbeing and welfare of all students

- Trauma Informed Practice: ‘Introducing a Trauma Informed Approach, the Stress Factor: Getting the Balance Right’ e learning and live webinars to all teachers.

- Responding to Critical Incidents eLearning Course: NEPS continue the roll out of critical incident training to all schools via an eLearning platform.

- Embracing Diversity includes looking at cultural and linguistic diversity, promoting inclusive practice in education, key psychological constructs such as bias, stereotyping and intersectionality, inclusive language and examples of good practice in schools.

- Welcome to our school: addresses how to support children and young people from international backgrounds, adopt key psychosocial principles (the Hobfoll principles) effective at addressing the wellbeing needs of those impacted by a traumatic event.

- Reluctant School Attendance and school avoidance behaviours: How to support Children and young people who display reluctant attendance and school avoidance behaviour.

A dedicated wellbeing portal has also been developed and is now available, bringing together all the wellbeing supports and resources that have been developed by the Department and the Department’s support services, which are available to view on gov.ie - Wellbeing in education.

Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) is a mandatory part of the Primary and Junior Cycle curriculum, which provide vital opportunities for the development of children’s wellbeing in the physical, social, emotional and intellectual domains.

An updated Junior Cycle SPHE specification was published by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in May 2023 and was rolled out for first years in all schools from September 2023. The updated Junior Cycle specification provides clear direction on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that all students should gain during the three years of junior cycle SPHE. It places a strong focus on the development of important life skills that young people need growing up in a fast changing and complex world. The SPHE specification is grounded in values of respect, equality, inclusivity, responsibility, dignity, compassion and empathy. The updated Junior Cycle SPHE specification consists of four strands: ‘Understanding Myself and Others’, ‘Making Healthy Choices’, ‘Relationships and Sexuality’, and ‘Emotional Wellbeing’.

The learning outcomes of the ‘Emotional Wellbeing’ Strand include that students should be able to ‘discuss the fluid nature of emotional wellbeing and ways to nurture and protect it’, to ‘consider the impact of stress and draw upon a variety of techniques to help self-regulate emotions and cope with the day-to-day stresses of life’, and to ‘ discuss ways to support themselves and others in challenging times and where/how/when to seek support, if needed’. The learning outcomes of the Making Healthy Choices strand in the updated specification include that students should be able to ‘consider the multifaceted nature of health and wellbeing, and evaluate what being healthy might look like for different adolescents, including how food, physical activity, sleep/rest and hygiene contribute to health and wellbeing, to ‘discuss societal, cultural and economic influences affecting young people when it comes to making healthy choices about smoking, alcohol and other addictive substances and behaviours (including gaming, gambling and social media addictions) and how harmful influences can be overcome in real-life situations’, and to ‘demonstrate skills and strategies to help make informed choices that support health and wellbeing and apply them in real-life situations that may be stressful and/or involve difficult peer situations’.

An updated Senior Cycle specification was approved and published in September 2024. Schools have until September 2027 to introduce the specification for students entering fifth year of the Leaving Certificate Established programme, to accommodate the necessary planning and preparatory work. This includes the development of resources and the provision of training for teachers, as key elements of this work. The specification includes a strand called ‘Health and Wellbeing’. The learning outcomes of this strand include that students should be able to ‘explore the factors that influence mental health and wellbeing, including the influence of family, peers, societal attitudes, media, technology, alcohol and drugs, and one’s sense of self’, to ‘recognise unhelpful thinking patterns and negative self-talk and how these can affect emotions and behaviour’, to ‘recognise the signs and symptoms of low mood, stress and anxiety in themselves and others and recognise when help should be sought, where to go and how to access help if needed’, and to ‘discuss ways of responding to low mood, stress and anxiety’.

An updated Primary Wellbeing curriculum has recently been published. The aims of the Wellbeing specification empower each child to thrive, now and in the future. It provides them with the necessary knowledge, skills, concepts, dispositions, attitudes and values to lead active, healthy and fulfilling lives to the best of their ability.

I would also like to draw your attention to some of the supports currently available in post-primary schools to support students including access to counselling which is a key part of the role of the Guidance Counsellor, offered on an individual or group basis as part of a developmental learning process, at moments of personal crisis but also at key transition points . Also at post primary a Student Support Team is a student-focused mechanism put in place by a school in order to co-ordinate the support available for students in the school and to facilitate links to the community and other non-school support services. Jigsaw, in partnership with the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS)/Department of Education & Youth, provides a comprehensive suite of mental health and wellbeing resources, training and programmes for post-primary schools through Neart. Neart supports schools to provide learning opportunities for students to promote mental health and wellbeing, as well as mental health webinars and eLearning courses for school staff, Student Support Teams and parents. A full outline of all Neart supports and resources on offer for the 2025/26 academic year is available here

Separately, in 2023, the department established a €5 million pilot programme of Counselling and Mental Health supports for primary schools. The pilot received additional funding, in subsequent Budgets, to continue the pilot, which will run to June 2026. The Counselling in Primary Schools Pilot consists of 2 strands. Strand 1 is the provision of one-to-one counselling to support small numbers of children in schools in counties Cavan, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan and Tipperary. The Department of Education and Youth created panels of pre-approved private counsellors to provide counselling supports under the pilot. In October 2024, the department announced the extension of Strand 1 of the Counselling in Primary Schools Pilot to 61 urban DEIS primary schools. These schools, in Dublin North City and Dublin South-West, have been identified by the department as supporting children from areas with some of the highest levels of disadvantage in the State.

Strand 2 of the pilot is the establishment of Education Wellbeing Teams to support 78 schools in cluster areas in Cork, Carlow, Dublin 7 and Dublin 16. To date, 20 Education Wellbeing Practitioners have been recruited. The focus of the support provided is on strengthening whole-school preventative approaches. This includes the provision of psycho-educational support for parents and teachers and the provision of early intervention on an individual and group basis to children with mild to emerging need using low-level therapeutically informed approaches.

The Counselling and Mental Health Pilots in Primary Schools are currently being externally evaluated by the Centre for Effective Services. It is anticipated that an evaluation report will be completed by Q4 2025. Through this evaluation the department are confident that valuable learning will be gathered that will inform future policy and provision in this area.

My Department continues to review our overall approach to fostering good mental health and wellbeing in our schools so that children can be optimally supported to reach their potential.