Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 30 March 2004
164 Mr. P. McGrath asked the Minister for Education and Science his views on whether, if the aim of the National Educational Welfare Board is to provide a service to the most disadvantaged and most at risk groups, that, by definition of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, all other schools are left without assistance from the NEWB and without recourse to the gardaí for persistent truancy problems; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9679/04]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Education (Welfare) Act was fully commenced on 5 July 2002. Under the Act, the National Educational Welfare Board was established to ensure that every child attends school regularly or otherwise receives an education.
To discharge its responsibilities, the board is developing a nationwide service to provide welfare-focused services to children, families and schools. It has appointed a chief executive officer, directors of corporate and educational services together with a further eight head office staff. To date, 53 educational welfare staff have been appointed. This includes 29 former school attendance officers who transferred to the board from the pre-existing service. In December 2003, the board advertised a competition to fill a further 15 vacancies which will bring the total staff complement to 84, including 68 service delivery staff. I understand the board will shortly be making eight educational welfare officer appointments from this competition.
As provided for under Section 10 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, I have arranged for officials of my Department to work with the board to ensure that any opportunities for integrated working between educational welfare officers and staff on other educational disadvantage programmes whose work involves a school attendance element are exploited to the maximum. I consider the implementation of protocols for such integrated working on attendance matters between the NEWB and, in particular, the home-school-community liaison scheme, the school completion programme and the visiting teacher service for Travellers to be very important. When in place, these will assist the NEWB in carrying out its remit and ensure that all available existing resources are utilised to the full.
As I have stated previously, I consider it essential that the board should focus on ways in which it can deliver the service with the personnel it has at the moment and with the help of other people involved in the area. When this has been achieved, I will consider the position again taking into account the available resources.
At this stage of its development, the aim of the board is to provide a service to the most disadvantaged areas and most at-risk groups. Five regional teams have now been established with bases in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and staff have been deployed since early December in areas of greatest disadvantage and in areas designated under the Government's RAPID programme. The 13 towns with significant school going populations, 12 of which are designated under the Government's RAPID programme, also now have an educational welfare officer allocated to them. These towns are Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Athlone, Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Bray, Clonmel, Tralee, Ennis, Sligo and Letterkenny. In addition, the board will follow up on urgent cases nationally where children are not currently receiving an education.
The board has also moved to provide a service to families who decide to have their children educated in places other than in recognised schools. A small number of people with the appropriate skills have been allocated to this work and assessments will commence shortly. My Department has recently issued guidelines to assist the board in meeting its responsibilities in this area. An information leaflet and an application form are being prepared for issue to families who are educating their children at home. Work is also proceeding on the establishment of the register for 16 and 17 year olds who leave school to enter employment.
Guidelines are being prepared for schools on the reporting of student absences and a protocol outlining the interaction between schools and educational welfare staff is being developed with the assistance of the school implementation group recently established by the board.
