Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 6 March 2019
107. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of times the critical incident policy has been implemented in schools in counties Tipperary, Cork, Laois and Offaly since 2011, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11196/19]
View answerBy way of background I might inform you that my Department’s National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides guidelines and resource materials for schools to enable them to deal with certain traumatic events which can adversely affect pupils and school staff. This publication 'Responding to Critical Incidents: NEPS Guidelines and Resource Materials for Schools' also outlines how schools can plan for crises. The guidelines refer to preventive approaches that schools can adopt in creating a safe and supportive environment.
The publication provides practical step-by-step guidelines for teachers and principals on how to respond when a tragedy occurs. It offers support to schools at a potentially overwhelming time.
The guidelines focus upon alerting schools to planning processes, structures and actions which will better allow them to cope with a traumatic incidents such as suicide or suspected suicide, murder, accidental death including road traffic accidents and drowning, and death through illness of members of the school community. In relation to suicide, advice is also given on prevention and positive mental health stratagems and approaches.
The Guidelines are kept under constant review and a third edition was circulated by NEPS to schools in 2016. Training in critical incident planning is part of the service provided by NEPS to schools and is a focus of my Department’s Action Plan for Education 2016-19 for post-primary schools.
NEPS psychologists will also, at the specific invitation of school authorities, attend at schools immediately following such incidents to offer direct advice and assistance to school staff in managing the situation.
In relation to the Deputy's specific questions in this regard, critical incidents are by their nature situations so named by schools themselves – traumatic events which have the potential to overwhelm the normal operation of the school. Depending upon the nature, severity or context of an event, schools may telephone NEPS for advice and support as to how they should proceed in relation to a particular event. In many situations this advice and support is adequate to equip schools to respond appropriately, without further support required from NEPS. In other situations, as is set out above, school authorities may request the attendance of NEPS psychologists on-site to provide support, advice and assistance in the delivery of the response. Therefore, in answer to the Deputy’s specific quest, all critical incidents notified to NEPS are acted upon as appropriate to the context and the wishes of school authorities.
For data purposes NEPS records critical incidents at three response levels:
Level 1 - an incident which involves a telephone response to the school but where no on-site presence of NEPS staff is requested,
Level 2 – where the school, in their contact with NEPS, request the presence of NEPS personnel on-site to advise and assist,
Level 3 – events which have NEPS personnel on-site but are of a magnitude that involves a broader community response from other support services such as the HSE.
Until NEPS gathered data on the number and extent of critical incidents from its eight regions which while including an incident count and level did not include element which allowed disaggregation by school and county.
In the academic year 2017/18 however NEPS changed its data gathering methodology and the data the Deputy requested is therefore available for this academic year only and I can inform the Deputy that some 66 critical incidents were recorded for counties Tipperary, Cork, Laois and Offaly in the period, 40 at level 1, 22 at level 2 and four at level 3.
I hope this is of assistance to the Deputy in this regard.
