The national educational psychological service, NEPS, agency is an executive agency of my Department. It is organised on a regional basis, with ten regions roughly equivalent to the ten health board regions. This is in order to facilitate communication and co-operation between the agency and the health boards. NEPS has delegated authority to develop and provide an educational psychological service to all students in primary and post-primary schools and in certain other centres supported by the Department. Provision of educational psychological assessments is part of the work of the educational psychologists in NEPS.
The educational psychologists in NEPS address the need for psychological assessments in the schools they serve and also provide advice on the identification and screening of children who might need to be assessed. It will take some time for the backlog of assessment work to be dealt with but good progress is being made. NEPS psychologists do not keep waiting lists of children requiring assessment in the sense of lists of names that are dealt with in chronological order. Each psychologist is responsible for a number of named schools and visits each on a regular basis.