The trade union which represents special needs assistants has called for immediate consultation on Government plans to introduce changes in the funding and delivery of the service.

Hundreds of teachers are to be trained in programmes aimed at preventing suicide and helping teenagers cope with traumatic incidents.

Psychologists are to advise the best way to support teenagers at a Co Cork school where female students’ names were put on a ‘rape list’ in the boys’ toilets.

The Government has been accused of reducing its targets of providing extra psychologists to support schools’ work with students with special needs.

Supports are to be allocated without the need for the assessment of pupils to guarantee extra help at school.

The HSE and childrens’ charity Barnardos are providing supports for the family and school friends of an 11-year-old boy who died by suspected suicide in Cork City at the weekend.

The Government has been urged to increase the number of educational psychologists across the country by 60% due to the volume of children needing psychological support.

Gardaí are treating the death of a family of five at a house in Co Cavan as a murder- suicide.

She deprived her young son of sleep, dressed him in unfamiliar clothes and filled him full of liquids so that he struggled to control his bladder. And she did it out of love, writes Caroline O’Doherty

Garda plans to interview the injured daughter of a couple who died in an apparent murder-suicide have been put on hold to allow her time to recover.

School friends and teachers of Thomas and Paddy O’Driscoll at Banogue National School were trying to come to terms with news of the tragedy yesterday.

Education and health experts are providing support for classmates of Brandon Skeffington.

Almost a quarter of all secondary schools have a special needs class, according to a study which says there is often a lack of awareness about the necessary criteria for establishing them.

Students are still waiting months for important assessments, despite all schools having access to the public educational psychological service, it was claimed.

Bodies representing children with disabilities have been left out of a working group devising changes to how resource teachers are allocated for them to schools.

The National Council for Special Education has been criticised for excluding disability organisations from a group planning changes to how special needs teachers are allocated to schools.

Parents of children with disabilities are being forced to pay for private assessments to avoid long waits for extra school supports, a parents’ organisation has claimed.

IN JUNE, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn was given Cabinet approval for 500 additional teachers to be appointed to schools this month.

Parents gathered together in little huddles and went in and out of Ballinkillen NS yesterday, to hear how best they can tell their own children about what happened to Eoghan and Ruairí Chada, while just a few hundred metres away Kathleen Chada was attempting to take in the enormity of her loss.

AODHÁN O’Riordáin is a Labour TD for Dublin North central and Brian Collins is a Labour councillor in Co Meath.

A double murder investigation is expected to be launched in Killorglin, Co Kerry today, following the grim discovery of the bodies of a young mother and her daughter in a house in the town on Sunday night.

Little Enrika’s classmates and teachers at Scoil Mhuire in Killorglin were yesterday trying to come to terms with the tragic news of her death.

The Department of Education took more than a year to properly follow up concerns about some children with Down’s syndrome being excluded from guaranteed resource teaching hours.

A school principal has led tributes to one of his young pupils who died in a tragic accident at his family’s farm in West Cork.

A range of psychologists and other mental health experts were on hand to support Shannon Gallagher’s schoolmates and teachers after the tragedy.

Pupils and staff at Anthony Ward’s school have been receiving help to cope with the tragic loss of their classmate and pupil.

Gardaí are waiting to question Anthony Ward’s mother after the eight-year-old found dead in his bed yesterday morning.

School friends of an eight-year-old boy found dead in his bed are to be given psychological support, it was confirmed today.

THE Department of Education has confirmed that eight autistic children whose school was closed down in the summer will have to receive home tuition while places are found for them.

THE state’s educational psychologist service for school-going children is “grossly under-funded” and its ratio of psychologists to pupils is much higher than the European average, with 5,000 pupils to each psychologist, instead of 3,000 to one.

THOUSANDS of children are on medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) causing “great concern” for parents who feel there are no alternatives.

STAFF at little Zoe Butler’s school have met with psychologists who will help her classmates come to terms with their friend’s sudden and tragic death.

THE Green Party has admitted it has lost its bid to protect students from hikes in registration fees, but said any increases should not take the charge beyond €2,000 a year.

THE Psychological Society of Ireland has said it is greatly concerned by Department of Education plans to transform the country’s 13 ABA schools for children with autism into special schools using a range of different teaching methods.

CHILDREN’S Minister Barry Andrews said the appointment of a ‘child czar’ would be the missing piece in the jig-saw of child protection services.

SCHOOL bus charges for some children will have trebled in a little more than a year when the latest budget rise comes into effect next summer.

THOUSANDS of primary schoolchildren with special needs are being denied vital treatment because of Government delays in providing psychological assessments.

Counsellors were working with teenagers at a school in Co Mayo tonight after a 15-year-old boy was found dead a week after a fellow pupil took his own life.

Children are being counselled today after one of their classmates was found dead in their school grounds.

SCHOOLS have access to only six more full-time educational psychologists than they had five years ago, according to Department of Education figures.

THIRD-LEVEL students have called for urgent action to increase the number of psychologists available to schools to ensure college applicants with disabilities are not forced to pay for private assessments.

PRINCIPALS countrywide are turning to cash-strapped charities in a desperate bid to obtain funding for students’ psychological assessments, the Irish Examiner has learnt.