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Educational Disadvantage Centre
Gary Gannon, Social Democrats | Prof Paul Downes, DCU IoE | Mary McPhillips, Chief Executive Daughters of Charity Henrietta Street | Donal Fallon, local historian | Brendan Power, Chair of the Board Daughters of Charity Henrietta Street
Gary Gannon, Social Democrats | Prof Paul Downes, DCU IoE | Mary McPhillips, Chief Executive Daughters of Charity Henrietta Street | Donal Fallon, local historian | Brendan Power, Chair of the Board Daughters of Charity Henrietta Street

Keynote Presentations on Multidisciplinary Teams in and around Schools: Professor Paul Downes

Professor Paul Downes, Director of the Educational Disadvantage Centre in DCU’s Institute of Education gave a number of recent keynote presentations on multidisciplinary teams in and around schools.

At the State Education Quality Service of Latvia Conference “Success Through Collaboration”, October 5, 2023, Professor Downes gave a keynote presentation,

Applying an Inclusive Systems Framework for Multidisciplinary Teams in and around Schools for Early School Leaving Prevention: Key Issues of Strategy and Implementation.

This was to inform the local early school leaving prevention action plans across almost all of the 40 municipalities in Latvia that are seeking to bring together stakeholders from health, social services and education. Situated against the background of the EU Council ‘Flagship’ Recommendation Pathways to School Success 2022 within which multidisciplinary teams are a pervasive focus, each of the Latvian municipalities is devising a local cross-sectoral strategy to meet the holistic needs of marginalised children and young people.

Professor Downes gave a Keynote Presentation, Key Budget Policy Priorities for Social Inclusion in Education: Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences, Complexity for DEIS+ and Quick Wins at the Children’s Rights Alliance National Webinar, End Child Poverty Week: Event 1- Educational Inequality, September 11, 2023. In this presentation, he highlighted the need for a national DEIS+ strategy focusing on developing multidisciplinary teams in schools of highest needs, due to poverty and social exclusion postpandemic.

He also gave an invited address at the Daughters of Charity, Henrietta St., Centenary Event, Kings Inns Dining Hall, on September 15th, where he highlighted the Henrietta St. Service as a national and international model of good practice, as a local community based one stop shop multidisciplinary team that also offers an intergenerational, community lifelong learning centre dimension. He called for a national strategic vision for such local community one stop shop multidisciplinary teams and reiterated this call at a meeting with the Minister for Children Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, hosted by the Daughters of Charity, in Henrietta St., on September 20th2023.