Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 8 July 2015
4. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the measures his Department is taking to improve access to the early education and preschool care for children with delayed development and special educational needs. [27467/15]
View answerThe supports the Minister and the Department are putting in place for children with special educational needs to access, and participate in, early education and preschool are scandalous. I would appreciate if he could inform the House what measures the Department, which has been in existence for four and a half years, is putting in place to ensure these children, who need additional supports, will get those supports, starting from next term.
The early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme is a free and universal programme for all children in the eligible age cohort, including children with special needs. Approximately 65,000 children are availing of this programme in the current school year.
The issue of access to the free preschool year for children with special needs was considered when the ECCE programme was launched and a number of measures were introduced to make the programme more accessible for these children. The measures in place include an exemption from the upper age limit where a child would benefit from starting primary school at a later age. In addition, children with special needs can apply to have the preschool year split over two years on a pro rata basis, for example, availing of the programme for two days a week in the first year and for three days a week in the second year.
Many children with special needs participate in the free preschool year without seeking these exemptions, so while there are 544 children with special needs availing of these exemptions for the current school year, the number of children with special needs availing of the ECCE programme would be far in excess of this. The Health Service Executive, HSE, works in partnership with the relevant disability service providers to address individual needs as they arise. This is done, for example, by funding special preschools that cater specifically for children with disabilities. In some limited cases at local level, disability services have also facilitated children with disabilities in some instances to attend mainstream preschools by providing assistant supports where possible and subject to resources.
The Government recognises that co-ordination and provision of appropriate supports for preschool children with special needs must be improved. Accordingly, when I established the interdepartmental group on future investment in early years and school age care and education I included in its terms of reference the need to examine how best to provide for children with special needs within the ECCE programme.
To advance this, the Departments of Children and Youth Affairs, Education and Skills and Health are working together to develop a new model of supports for preschool children with special needs. A group comprising representatives from these three Departments, the HSE, Tusla, the National Council for Special Education, the National Disability Authority, Better Start and the Dublin city childcare committee has started its work. This group aims to have an agreed model by early September, with a view to making a cross-departmentally supported proposal for the resources required in time for the Estimates process.
The Minister focused his answer on one year, the ECCE programme, but the question was on the whole of the early years programme. Early education should start before the free preschool year, particularly for children with special educational needs. While the programme is welcome, the Minister mentioned a leniency in its application for children with special educational needs. The number of people on a split year or availing of the upper age threshold is only in the region of 500 but various reports indicate there is in excess of 6,000 children with special educational needs. Can the Minister's Department confirm the number of children under the age of five who have been diagnosed with special educational needs and the number of children currently awaiting assessment?
Earlier this week, I met a parents group which was set up to fight for greater supports for their children. One mother told me that for a parent of a young child with special educational needs, everything is a fight and that she feels beaten down. This is a direct consequence of the lack of inclusion policies the Minister's Government has presided over for the past four years.
As the Deputy will be aware, yesterday the Minister for Education and Skills announced additional special needs assistants, SNAs, for those with special needs in the school system. The number will be in the region of 600. As part of that conversation, I made a strong case for the need for special assistants who would provide special assistance to children in the preschool years. This would not necessarily follow an SNA-type model.
Deputy Troy asked a number of questions which relate to other Departments. My Department would not have that information. In particular, those awaiting assessment would be a matter for the HSE. Nonetheless, this group is doing its work. It will look at how best to address these issues and how best to support children with special needs. I wish to put it on the record of this House that I believe that had we had a proper system in respect of this area, the later necessity for much of the support in the primary school system would have been obviated and children of two to five years, and younger even, would be getting the special additional support they need. Much of that, however, is beyond my remit in terms of speech and language therapy and other therapies.
The Minister is very good at saying it is someone else's fault or that it falls within someone else's remit. He should know, as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs with responsibility for early childhood care and education, how many children under the age of five have special educational needs. The announcement by the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy O'Sullivan, on the increase in the number of special needs assistants for primary school is welcome, but what is the Minister doing for children in early education? He is doing nothing. He has established another interdepartmental group which will report at some time in the future. He put forward an amendment to our committee a number of weeks ago which confirmed that between the Departments of Health, Education and Skills and Children and Youth Affairs, no one wanted to be the lead agency to pursue policy to ensure children with special needs would get additional supports.
After four and a half years in office, there should be a national policy to support children with additional needs in the early needs sector, but there is not. At best, it is disjointed and inconsistent and at worst there are no supports in certain areas. Only yesterday I received a phone call from a constituent whose child was refused entry to a preschool. If the preschool were to take the child, the parents would have to pay out of their own pockets for the special needs assistant. Not only that, they were being asked to pay for the increase in public liability insurance as well, which is scandalous.
It was inevitable at some point during the course of these questions that Deputy Troy would revert to type. He stands there pontificating from the far side of this Chamber about the scandalous state of the services his party left us to deal with. He speaks of our lack of action when I have outlined clearly to him that serious action is being taken and that this group will report in September, which will be in time for the Estimates process. He chooses to ignore that and goes off on a rant. The bottom line, as everyone in this Chamber well knows, is that we were left with no money and a totally dysfunctional HSE when we arrived into Government. A lot of progress has been made since then. His party had 14 years in Government before that with unprecedented wealth to deal with this issue and one can only say it made a bags of it.
The Minister was three years in the Department of Health and he was moved over because he was not doing his job.
I am not prepared to allow Deputy Troy continue to try to pretend progress has not been made when it is being made-----
Listen to the parents.
-----in extremely serious circumstances. If Deputy Troy continues to interrupt, I will continue to talk because I will not be silenced by him or his ilk.
