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The Emotional Health and Wellbeing of pupils has been identified as a priority for action at Ministerial level.
Emotional wellbeing is critical in developing a healthy successful school community including developing a pupil's social, emotional and behavioural skills. In September 2007, the Department began work in partnership with all key statutory and voluntary and community sector stakeholders and interested parties to develop a 'Pupils Emotional Health and Wellbeing (PEHAW) Programme'. The programme focuses on positive prevention by building coping skills in children and young people and complements the personal development strand of the curriculum.
With additional funding of £2.5million made available over 2008/09 to 2010/2011, the learning and outcomes from the post primary programme will be built upon. The emphasis in the first year will be to engage with professionals to identify appropriate options for primary and special schools; engaging with CCEA on how to support the Personal Development strand of the revised curriculum, developing standards and commissioning training materials. The upskilling of teachers will follow.
The Programme will contribute to the building of resilient emotional health and well being of pupils. It is intended to be a vehicle for providing the "glue" to integrate individual policies/services such as all non-academic and curriculum activities affecting pupils such as counselling, pastoral care systems, suicide prevention, anti-bullying, discipline process and the healthy schools initiative in a consistent and coherent way.
Access to professional counselling support is now available for young people in post-primary schools during difficult and vulnerable periods in their lives. Counselling contributes to tackling barriers to learning which may result from personal trauma, difficult home circumstances, stress, bullying and child abuse.
Young people can self refer to this service as well as being referred by the school. A minimum amount of counselling time is allocated to those schools which use the service. 98% of post-primary schools are signed up to use the free service.
Schools in the post-primary sector report that the availability of the counselling service has been a major boost to their capacity to support young people.
The ICSS is provided under contractual arrangements by organisation(s) that have undergone a public tendering process. The service is delivered using standards and protocols based on good counselling practice within the organisational context of the school. Links to the ICSS Operating Handbook and Practice Standards can be accessed below:
Independent Counselling Service for Schools Operating Handbook - PDF 175KB
Independent Counselling Service for Schools - Practice Standards - PDF 48KB
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