The Minister for Education and the Minister for Special Education and Inclusion announced the recruitment campaign for therapists to work in schools with children. The therapists will be part of the new Educational Therapy Support Service (ETSS), which was established in June 2024. 

The recruitment campaign will see the appointment of 39 occupational and speech and language therapists as well as 5 behaviour practitioners on a permanent basis to the National Council for Special Education. Previously, these positions could only be filled on a temporary basis, which made it more difficult to recruit for them. 

ETSS therapists will work with teachers in classrooms to collaboratively design and deliver educationally relevant interventions for students with a range of needs. This will allow, for example, a teacher and an occupational therapist to explore opportunities to integrate more movement into learning to support regulation or for a speech and language therapist to model evidence-based vocabulary strategies in the classroom. 

This service is an addition to Health Service Executive Primary Care and Children’s Disability Network Teams, which will continue to offer children one-to-one appointments with therapists. The staff in the ETSS will support special schools and this will be in addition to the Government pilot for enhanced in-school therapy supports in 16 special schools which was announced in August 2024 and has commenced in Dublin, Galway and Cork. 

Source: Eurydice Unit Ireland