This paper presents the results of a qualitative study completed with 16 designated liaison persons (DLPs) for child protection in Ireland. The care practices and systems in place in Irish primary schools that support child protection work are the particular focus of this paper. Recent changes in legislation, following the publication of the Children First Act 2015 (Government of Ireland, Irish Statute Book; Office of the Attorney General), are considered. The Act recognises all teachers registered with the Teaching Council as mandated persons. Mandated persons are recognised as persons who work with children and young people and are required to report child abuse, above a defined threshold, which comes to their attention in the course of their professional or employment duties. Semi‐structured interviews were completed with the DLPs, and an exploratory approach using interpretative phenomenologial analysis was deemed the most suitable method of analysis for the study. Five superordinate themes emerged from the findings, alongside a number of subordinate themes; the theme ‘The School Story’ which focuses on the care practices that are undertaken in schools daily is illuminated throughout this paper. The findings highlight the need for formal acknowledgement of this work in schools and also for greater interagency communication and collaboration in the area of child protection.
Key Practitioner Messages
Teachers, in their day‐to‐day work in schools and through the care structures in place in schools, contribute in a significant way to the safety and protection of children.
There is a need for greater communication and collaboration between schools and the Child and Family Agency to support children at risk of abuse effectively.
There should be formal recognition in the evaluations undertaken by the Department of Education of the care practices that exist in schools.
While there is an increasing interest in the notion of well-being—politically, societally and educationally—it remains an enigmatic, multifaceted concept that sometimes eludes definition in academic articles. This article takes account of policy developments in the area of well-being over the last decade in Ireland, particularly educational policy developments. It presents research findings from a study conducted with primary school teachers on the west coast of Ireland about what well-being means to them as teachers and their challenges in promoting it. The findings highlight that well-being is open to many interpretations, and there is a clear gap between the language of well-being policy documents and the practices taking place in schools.
This paper examines how wellbeing has evolved in educational policy over the last decade in Ireland. The influence of the developments in national policy on wellbeing are also considered. While the concept of wellbeing is progressing in educational policy documents and becoming embedded in the language of the school community, a review of literature in the area highlights that it is difficult to define and to understand. Although wellbeing is a central theme in Early Years education and an area of learning in post-primary education for Junior Cycle in the Irish context, presently it can be regarded as implicit in the primary school curriculum rather than a defined theme or area of learning. The Draft Curriculum Framework published by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in February 2020 includes wellbeing as one of five broad curriculum areas. This paper presents reflection on the inclusion of wellbeing as an area of learning in a redeveloped primary school curriculum.
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