Kathleen Funchion: Returning school completion programme to Education

Thanks very much. I am delighted to see this legislation go through. I think you know that I am very supportive of it. I felt in the last stall in particular from 2016 it would have been an issue I raised in particular, and I am going to focus my remarks probably solely on the school completion programme. I really felt that historically they were an educational programme and then they were transferred out of the Department of Education. I think it is great that they are going back because I think there are really an educational role for them and it is funny actually some people do not fully understand exactly what the school completion programme is. In fact I have come across some people that think it is actually something in relation to physical building of schools but when you do know the programme it is absolutely amazing and I love having the opportunity to talk about it. I have experience with the programme in particular in Kilkenny and I know that there is 122 of them nationwide and I think you know maybe in the future funding permits it is something that should be rolled out to all primary and secondary schools because the key thing that this does and that so many other services don't do is it focuses on the child and the child's needs. It can identify if a child is maybe struggling, falling behind, whether that is maybe a learning difficulty or there might be something in particular going on at home at a particular time in a child's life or they might just be for whatever reason, there are very many reasons why at various stages children struggle struggle with school and the thing about it is it becomes a vicious cycle. So if you start struggling in school and then you start struggling with your homework and then you start not doing your homework and then you start going into school without your homework done and then you start thinking I don't want to go into school today and particularly as kids get into the secondary school level it is not so bad in terms of parents when they are in primary school to a certain extent obviously you are dropping your kids to school but some of that power as your kids get into the teenage years you know it kind of goes away from you and kids kind of make up some of their own decisions and it can be a battle and the amount of parents that face that battle in terms of children in school and something like this program is just invaluable in terms of the homework clubs that they do because in my experience the homework clubs provided by school completion it is not just a standard you go in for an hour to do your homework you actually get assistance and help with your homework and that can help in terms of your day to day school and they also do play therapy and they do counsel and then depending on the age whichever is age appropriate and I know of families that had sudden bereavement and they were lucky enough ironically to be in a school completion program school that they were actually able to access that play therapy and that counsel and if they weren't in a school completion school it would have been a battle you know you maybe have gone through the whole CAMHS process it just would have been a disaster and the counseling is often done during school time you're not kind of putting a big big red circle around children and that's what's so important that children are getting these supports and in often cases they don't even realize they're getting the supports and I just want to give the example of going back to the homework clubs where one school I'm aware of they had two homework clubs and one was the school completion homework club but no child realized that there was any difference in that so that's just invaluable because you're breaking that whole thing around stigma and labeling children and recently and recently actually our party leader Mary Lou Macdonald was in the school completion program in Kilkenny over the summer and we were able to meet with people who had actually gone through the program who had finished school gone on to to employment and were success stories and it's just I think it's amazing and the work that they do for the small money that they're on and I think the Department of Education is the right location for them and that's I wanted to focus my remarks on that because I always like to take the opportunity to talk about the school completion program and I would extend that invitation to yourself Minister even though they're they're moving from children over to education you would always be welcome certainly at either the school completion programs in our constituency thanks very much thank you