I welcome the Minister of State. In recent years, we have seen a huge increase in after-school facilities. Many of these services are provided either on the school campus or in conjunction with a nearby crèche or preschool. It enables the children to go there after school, do their homework, engage in activities and maybe get a meal or whatever. It is good for all involved. It allows the parents to continue working until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. However, a problem has emerged where children with additional needs face significant barriers in accessing after-school care. This has been brought to my attention by a parent of five-year-old twins, who are both autistic and are about to start school in September. When she sought admission for them into an after-school facility close to the school they would be attending, she was met with reluctance. She and I had a meeting with the manager of the facility and the board of management. Their reluctance to accept the children was well founded, in that their concern was for the safety of all the children who would be using the facility and for the staff. The children will be attending primary school but they will be part of an autistic class. The ratio is six children to one special education teacher, with two special needs assistants, SNAs, in the room. Then they will be going to an after-school facility where the ratio is 1:12. There are no additional supports, with twice as many children and only one staff member, with no training in this area.

I inquired with other after-school providers to see whether this was the case and whether there were any other supports available for after-school providers to include children with additional needs. I was told that there were no other supports available. Everyone I spoke to was very willing to get training for themselves and their staff so that they could include the children. However, they felt that they would need a reduced ratio or additional support staff.

I was then in contact with an after-school provider in Monaghan who provided a specialised after-school. I should say that it is a mainstream service but it includes children with additional needs. This provider identified this need because she said there were parents who could not work because they had nowhere for their children to go once the school day finished. She worked closely with the HSE and the children's disability network team, CDNT, in Monaghan. It is a planned service that integrates the children into the mainstream setting. It is not segregated; it is inclusive. It is providing the supports children need. It is building the capacity of the children in that service. It is working with the CDNT and providing some of the services that the CDNT provides. It is benefiting all of the children. Perhaps a model like this could be looked at for other areas of the country. Maybe it could be done on a pilot basis to see if it would work.

As I said, it needs to be planned to ensure that there is systematic integration and it is not just putting children with additional needs, some of which are quite complex, into a mainstream setting and seeing how it works. It needs to be planned. It needs to be, as I said, systematic integration and the supports put in there to ensure that all are safe and that all works well.

Another point made to me is that most after-school services provide services for primary school-aged children up to the age of 13, but children with additional needs may require services over that age, maybe up to 18 years, especially if they are in a special school setting and require this service. It is even to incorporate that into it.

I thank Senator Tully for raising this important issue and offering me the opportunity to respond. I, too, welcome the increase in overall after-school facilities. Many of our communities have benefited from them. I commend the work of the childcare provider in Monaghan that the Senator mentioned. I was not aware of them and it sounds like they are definitely doing a lot of innovative and proactive work in this space. It would be a great opportunity for other childcare providers and regions to learn from.

The access and inclusion model, AIM, is a model of supports designed to ensure that children with disabilities or additional needs can fully participate in the early childhood care and education, ECCE, preschool programme, thereby reaping the benefits of quality early learning and care and realising the opportunity to reach their full potential. AIM provides a suite of universal and targeted supports across seven levels. Measures include: staff training; specialised equipment, appliances or capital grants towards minor building alterations; therapeutic supports; and the facilitation of a lower ratio of children to staff in preschool rooms, as the Senator mentioned, or funding for an extra staff member as a shared resource, where a child with additional needs is present. A core feature and strength of AIM is that it does not require a diagnosis. Instead, resources are allocated based on a child's individual needs. Over the past ten years, more than 41,300 children in over 5,000 settings nationally have received AIM targeted supports and many more children have benefited from universal measures enhancing inclusion in their service.

AIM is presently being extended on a phased basis as funding becomes available. As a first step in this extension, all AIM targeted supports are now, since the beginning of September 2024, available to ECCE children beyond the time that they spend in the ECCE programme, both in term and out of term. Children can now access these supports for up to six hours per day both inside and outside of the ECCE term. The programme for Government commits to "examine and expand the Access and Inclusion Model and make it available to younger children". Officials in the Department are currently considering the policy implications and appropriate mechanisms to extend AIM to children aged under three. Consideration will be given at a later date to an extension of AIM for children attending school-age childcare. I know that is the cohort the Senator is particularly interested in today. Such an extension would also require a redesign of AIM to ensure that it meets the different needs of children in the older age cohort.

Equal Start is another key policy model which focuses on inclusion. Equal Start is a funding model and set of associated universal and targeted measures to support access and meaningful participation, including in school-age childcare, for children and their families who experience disadvantage. Since September 2024, 806 priority settings serving 38,000 children have been receiving funding to support reduced adult-child ratios, and greater engagement with families, as well as other child and family support services. Of these, over 450 settings provide school-age childcare services.

As the Senator said in her contribution, a full extension of this to school-going children would need to be planned and would need systematic integration. That is something that we would be looking at on a longer-term basis.

The AIM programme is excellent for the preschool children. Something like that would need to be extended into the after-school provision as well. In the case of the manager I met, there is a crèche and preschool facility on-site and she is familiar with AIM. She said that is the sort of support you need for the after-school service. She wants to include the twins to whom I referred, for example. I am sure there are many other children who would love to be included in after-school provision. It would be beneficial for them, and, indeed, for other children as well.

However, the childcare providers feel it is a safety risk, especially if one of the children is a flight risk, for example, so there needs to be a number of staff who can keep an eye at all times on all the children in their care. There are 12 of them so it is very hard to watch them. If this could be rolled out soon, it would be welcome. The after-school childcare providers would welcome this. They want to be inclusive and at the moment they feel they cannot be.

I thank the Senator. The programme for Government committed to an expansion of AIM and to its extension to younger children. The current phase of expansion focuses on the development of a model for children under three years to meet the specific needs of that particular age cohort. It is intended that, over time, all children with additional needs who are registered in early learning and childcare services will have access to support under AIM, with consideration to be given at a later date to extending AIM to school-age children. That would benefit the twins the Senator is working to support. A tailored, evidence based model for this age group would also be required. It is critical that these policy responses are strongly evidence-based and reflective of the needs of the children. That will require the tailoring of AIM and the differentiation of approaches to each of the two separate age cohorts.

An action plan is under way in the Department to address many key improvements. Three notable steps already achieved may be of interest to the Senator. The first is the publication of introductory guidelines for the inclusion of autistic children in early learning, school-age childcare and childminding settings. That is happening in collaboration with AsIAm. The second is the recent launch of the updated leadership for inclusion in the early years, LINC, co-ordinator programme with a focus on the needs of autistic children and the development of supplementary continuous professional development materials. The third is the roll-out of Equal Start, which as I referenced earlier, is a key policy model which focuses on inclusion. Equal Start is a funding model and set of associated universal and targeted measures to support access and meaningful participation, including for school-age childcare, of children and their families who experience disadvantage.