Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 March 2024
307. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the total number of unique children enrolled in AIM for 2022, 2023 and 2024, in tabular form. [11201/24]
View answerThe Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) is a model of supports designed to ensure that children with additional needs can access the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme. Its goal is to empower Early Learning and Care (ELC) providers to deliver an inclusive pre-school experience.
The main supports are grouped into universal or targeted supports. Universal supports are designed to create a more inclusive culture in ELC 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 the ECCE Programme and reap the benefits of high quality early learning and care.
In the table below are the statistics for the number of unique children who have been approved for these targeted supports for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 programme calls. Many more children benefit from the universal AIM provision of more inclusive settings but these are not readily quantifiable.
|
Programme Call |
Unique Children approved AIM Levels 4, 5 & 7 |
|
2023/24 (call opening to 29/02/2024) |
7,922 |
|
2022/23 (Full programme call) |
7,217 |
|
2021/22 (Full programme call) |
5,648 |
