Olwyn Enright
Question:143 Ms Enright asked the Minister for Education and Science the number of education welfare officers in place; the number during the rest of 2004; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21022/04]
View answerThursday, 8 July 2004
Questions (149)
Written answers
The Education (Welfare) Act was fully commenced on 5 July 2002. Under the Act, the National Educational Welfare Board was established to ensure that every child attends school regularly or otherwise receives an education.
To discharge its responsibilities, the board is developing a nationwide service to provide welfare-focused services to children, families and schools. For this purpose, educational welfare officers, EWOs, have been appointed and deployed throughout the country to provide a welfare-focused service to support regular school attendance and discharge the board's functions locally. It has appointed a chief executive officer, directors of corporate and educational services and the necessary support and delivery staff. The overall staffing complement is 84, comprising 16 HQ and support staff, five regional managers, 11 senior educational welfare officers and 52 educational welfare officers.
To date, 80 staff have been appointed by the board, including four regional managers, ten senior educational welfare officers and 52 educational welfare officers. I understand that the board is arranging to fill the vacancies at regional manager and senior educational welfare officer level in the near future.
As provided for under section 10 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, I have arranged for officials of my Department to work with the board to ensure that any opportunities for integrated working between educational welfare officers and staff on other educational disadvantage programmes whose work involves a school attendance element are exploited to the maximum. I consider the implementation of protocols for such integrated working on attendance matters to be between the NEWB and, in particular, the home-school-community liaison scheme, the school completion programme and the visiting teacher service for Travellers to be very important. When in place, these will assist the NEWB in carrying out its remit and ensure that all available existing resources are utilised to the full. As I have stated previously, I consider it essential that the board should focus on ways in which it can deliver the service with the personnel it has the moment and with the help of other people involved in the area. When this has been achieved, I will consider the position again taking into account the available resources.
At this stage of its development, the aim of the board is to provide a service to the most disadvantaged areas and most at-risk groups. Five regional teams have now been established with bases in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and staff have been deployed since early December in areas of greatest disadvantage and in areas designated under the Government's RAPID programme. Thirteen towns with significant school-going populations, 12 of which are designated under the Government's RAPID programme, also now have an EWO allocated to them. These towns are Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Athlone, Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Bray, Clonmel, Tralee, Ennis, Sligo and Letterkenny. In addition, the board will follow up on urgent cases nationally where children are not currently receiving an education.