Emotional support and hot meals at school would greatly improve our children's lives
Trauma and adverse childhood experiences take many different forms, including school bullying, bereavement, separation/divorce, alcohol/addiction issues or domestic violence.
Specialist emotional counselling and hot meals for hunger prevention in schools are two major issues for the government’s Covid pandemic impact response in education.
Successive recent Joint Oireachtas Education Committee reports on Covid response (January 2021) and on mental health and school bullying (August 2021) have given the same key recommendation to the Minister for Education and Skills, Norma Foley, namely, that emotional counselling and therapeutic supports be provided in all primary and secondary schools as an ‘urgent priority’.
The Covid Response Oireachtas Report also recommends that "the provision of hot meals to vulnerable students should be expanded to cover periods of school closures and holidays and a Hot Meals Programme should be rolled out nationally to all schools on a phased basis".
The Ombudsman for Children, Dr Niall Muldoon, was asked by the chair of the Oireachtas Committee to develop a concrete proposal for such specialist emotional counselling/therapy in schools.
A key recommendation in the Child Ombudsman’s proposal is a pilot across the whole country to cover both primary and post-primary involving the hiring of therapists, akin to those working within the National Counselling Service.
This gives the added value of consistent presence around the school for acting earlier and reducing problems quickly. His proposal to establish 160 emotional counsellors nationally, in every county, costs less than €10 milllion per annum.
The August 2021 Report of the Oireachtas Committee adds further detail to its key recommendation: “The National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) should be reconstituted and expanded urgently as the National Educational Psychological and Counselling Service (NEPCS) and mandated to provide specialist emotional counselling and therapeutic supports, on site, in all primary and secondary schools. The service should be adequately resourced and funded to ensure it can deliver on its mandate”.
Ireland is radically out of step with many European countries such as, for example, Czech Republic, Belgium, Sweden, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia and Germany who all provide emotional counselling services in schools. Croatia and Bulgaria have legislation in place that provides for emotional counselling.
The Children's Ombudsman notes in the Oireachtas Report that there is a national school counselling strategy in second-level schools in both Wales and Northern Ireland — where statutory access is granted to all children in second-level schools. Over 60% of secondary schools in England also have this access and in 2020, for the first time, the Scottish Government pledged to invest £80m over the next four years in the provision of counselling in education, including the use of £60m to provide counsellors to all second-level schools in Scotland.
Trauma and adverse childhood experiences take many different forms, including school bullying, bereavement, separation/divorce, alcohol/addiction issues or domestic violence. These experiences have detrimental educational impacts on early school leaving, concentration, motivation, engagement, interaction and attendance in school.
A teacher can offer support as mental health promotion and stress prevention, but is not a therapist. The National Wellbeing in Schools Policy 2018 of a teacher as ‘One good adult’ is no substitute for qualified emotional counsellors/therapists.
NEPS cannot and do not provide sustained one-to-one emotional counselling support for students, even for critical incidents. Career Guidance Counsellors’ remit is not for trauma and adverse childhood experience.
Universal pre-packaged programmes on wellbeing at trauma-informed schools are at the universal level and are no substitute for the trauma and adverse childhood experiences level of one-to-one counselling. Specialist emotional counsellors/therapists onsite in schools are a key part of an early intervention strategy to prevent mental health problems reaching clinical levels of need bringing referral to CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service).
A major concern is the impact on child poverty of the economic crisis generated by Covid-19 and the series of lockdowns. 109,401 children age 6-11 experienced poverty calculated at 70% of the national median income, 72,649 at 60% of the national median income, and 28,632 6-11 year olds experienced deep poverty, at 50% of the national median income.
These Irish official 2020 child poverty figures based on a 2018 analysis are a massive current underestimation of need and are outdated in light of the pandemic impacts affecting Irish children and families.
The explicit commitment in the Programme for Government 2020 is to "continue to review and expand the roll-out of the new Hot School Meals initiative". This vital initiative received an October 2020 budget commitment of an additional €5.5m for hot meals in schools for 35,000 more children nationally.
However, there is need for a much more substantial financial commitment in the forthcoming budget to expand this across DEIS and other schools nationally so it is not simply a hit-and-miss approach depending on which schools can or cannot avail of this national scheme.
The Department of Education and Skills' response to the Covid pandemic needs to be a holistic one that is not only focused narrowly on academic learning loss but on emotional and hunger needs of students.
Emotional counsellors are routinely available to all third-level students in Ireland.
This glaring gap in provision for primary and secondary school students must be directly and substantially addressed in the forthcoming budget by the Minister for Education and Skills, Norma Foley, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the whole of government to implement these key Oireachtas Education Committee recommendations on emotional counsellors/therapists onsite in schools.
- Dr Paul Downes is Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Educational Disadvantage Centre, DCU Institute of Education and Expert Advisor to the EU Commission on Early School Leaving.
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