Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 4 October 2023
184. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of children in receipt of AIMS support in early years settings for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, in tabular form. [42939/23]
View answerThe Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) is a model of supports designed to ensure that children with disabilities can access the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme. Its goal is to empower pre-school providers to deliver an inclusive pre-school experience, ensuring that every eligible child can meaningfully participate in the ECCE Programme and reap the benefits of high quality early learning and care.
The main supports are grouped into universal or targeted supports. Universal supports are designed to create a more inclusive culture in Early Learning and Care settings, through training courses and qualifications for staff. Where universal supports are not enough to meet the needs of an individual child, targeted supports are available to ensure the child can meaningfully participate in pre-school.
Below are the statistics for number of children who have been approved for these targeted supports. Many more children benefit from the universal AIM provision towards provision of more inclusive settings but these are not readily quantifiable.
|
Levels 4,5 & 7 Combined |
Unique Children Approved |
|
2023/24 (As of 30th August 2023) |
4,996 |
|
2022/23 |
7,217 |
|
2021/22 |
5,648 |
|
2020/21 |
4,238 |
