The District Court directed Tusla to take immediate steps to coordinate with a school, the Department of Education and Skills and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) over support for an anonymised child in its long-term care. It also ordered Tusla to provide an appropriately qualified person to accompany the child to school and remain there during the school day while the school awaited sufficient Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support from the NCSE.
The directions were made under section 47 of the Child Care Act 1991 in a dispute about the child’s welfare and access to support at a new school. The judgment, dated 11 May 2018, records that the child was 12 and had been in the Agency’s care for six years. The child’s parents were respondents. The Guardian ad Litem brought the application.
The judgment describes the child as having severe attachment difficulties, a diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder and special educational needs. It says the child could experience dissociative or fearful episodes at school and needed substantial support to attend consistently. The Agency’s social worker and the Guardian ad Litem agreed that the child needed one-to-one support from an SNA, including help entering and leaving school and feeling safe there.
The child had moved to a different foster placement after the previous carers became seriously ill, and later changed school. The court said there had been an “unacceptable time” before the Agency engaged with the school and the SENO, the NCSE official handling special needs applications. The judgment records that the NCSE had approved access to SNA support, but the school had to manage competing needs among pupils from its existing allocation. The school’s decision was under appeal.
The Guardian ad Litem argued that section 47 empowered the court to order the support sought. The Agency argued that providing an SNA was the responsibility of education authorities, not the Child and Family Agency, and that the requested order would exceed its statutory powers.
The court did not direct the NCSE to allocate a specified number of assistants or decide the appeal. It ordered the Agency to actively coordinate with the school, the Department and the NCSE concerning the application and appeal process. Pending allocation of sufficient SNA support to the school, the Agency must provide an appropriately qualified person to bring the child to school daily and stay for the school day, enabling the child to enter school and use the SNA provision already available through the school’s allocation.