Significant engagement is ongoing between my Department, the Department of Health, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and the Department of Education to develop a joined-up approach to address system level demand in therapeutic disciplines and healthcare programmes, particularly for young people.
Last year 462 additional places were be created in higher education institutions in the State, in healthcare programmes. This represents meaningful additionality within existing infrastructure. Fifty of these places were in Speech and Language, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy.
In July 2023, Minister Donnelly and I announced additional places in nursing and allied health professions in higher education institutions in Northern Ireland. Eighty additional places on allied health programmes in Ulster University are being funded by both Departments. Sixty-Eight of these are across Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy. These places have been secured on a one-year basis.
Funding was secured in Budget 2023 by the Department of Health to provide for sponsorship for Clinical and Counselling trainee Psychologist PhD programmes. This arrangement is not the responsibility of my Department, but the Department of Health and the HSE.
A working group in the Department of Education has been examining how the National Education Psychology Service (NEPS) can continue to recruit adequate numbers of suitably qualified Educational Psychologists and continue to respond to the educational psychological needs of children in recognised primary and post-primary schools across the country.
To address supply issues in the medium to long term a workforce plan for educational psychologists is being developed within the Department of Education. As an immediate short-term measure the Department of Education introduced a bursary to support Trainee Educational Psychologists currently in their third year (or third year equivalent) of professional training in University College Dublin (UCD) and Mary Immaculate College (MIC). NEPS are offering a Trainee Educational Psychologist Bursary Award of €40,000 per annum, for each of the three years of the doctoral programme which commenced in September 2023. My Department will continue to work with all relevant stakeholders to improve provision of therapy related programmes available to students.
The attached spreadsheet contains the enrolments for the five years to September 2022, sourced from the HEA Student Records System, and are rounded to the nearest 5. Data for September 2023 is not yet available.
Year One Data
