Support Schools, Parents, and children: Review New SNA Provisions

We are writing as parents, teachers, special needs assistants, and concerned citizens from across Ireland. Together, we urge you to stop and reconsider the new Special Needs Assistant (SNA) guidelines. These changes risk undoing the progress that has been made in building inclusive education. The new staffing limits and rigid rules do not simply affect schools; they threaten children’s well-being. They strip away essential supports, leave families to cope alone, and place impossible pressure on teachers and SNAs. If these rules go ahead, children will lose their right to feel safe, supported, and included in their classrooms.

For children with Autism and other complex needs, school can already be overwhelming. The constant noise, crowded spaces, and daily demands often mean they spend each day masking, suppressing their natural behaviours in order to fit in. Masking comes at a heavy price. When children return home, the effort of holding it all together often erupts into meltdowns—overwhelming emotional and physical breakdowns. These are not acts of bad behaviour but the result of sheer exhaustion from surviving a school day without enough support. 

Parents face the heartbreaking reality of children becoming ill from stress, suffering stomach pains and vomiting, or regressing in milestones such as toilet training. Many children begin bedwetting or soiling again despite having already mastered these skills, which is a clear sign of emotional distress. Families also endure daily outbursts that can last for hours, leaving parents and siblings drained and homes in turmoil. This reality leaves many unable to work, unable to sustain healthy family life, and pushed to the very edge of what they can bear. The new SNA rules ignore these lived experiences and will push already exhausted families further into crisis.

The risks extend beyond homes and into classrooms in many ways. One child with Autism and asthma in a mainstream classroom, for example, requires an inhaler but cannot use it independently. This family has been informed that under the new guideline, that there will be no SNA support for the child. Without an SNA, this child is left vulnerable to a life-threatening medical situation during the school day. In another case, a child who simply needs regular movement breaks to regulate and remain in the classroom has been told they must consider leaving their mainstream class and move to a special setting because no SNA is available to provide this most basic of supports. This is not inclusion. It is exclusion by another name, forcing children out of their local schools because staffing has not been provided.

The time allowed for schools to review SNA staffing, from September 15th to October 24th, is so short that it leaves no possibility to respond to children whose needs arise later in the year. Pooling SNA support across all classes risks stripping vital protection from Autism classes and sets schools against each other in the competition for scarce resources. There seems to be a lack of clarity around the new guidelines. The definitions of “complex needs” are narrow and rigid, excluding many children who require daily help but do not fit neatly into the outlined categories. Behavioural needs are treated as unimportant, despite the fact that challenging behaviour is often the clearest signal of a child in distress. Schools are also expected to prove they are using the new Relate document, yet staff have been given neither the time nor the training to use it properly. Instead of being a helpful tool, it has become a bureaucratic hurdle. Above all, the overall tone of these guidelines is not one of support but of rationing, creating fear among schools that their SNA staff will be cut and undermining the teamwork and trust that are essential to inclusion.

Teachers are already under enormous pressure to ensure every child learns. When children are denied the SNA support they need, their distress interrupts the classroom and divides teachers’ attention, harming the education of all students. SNAs are not an optional extra. They are the bridge that allows children to access their education, the safeguard of their emotional well-being, and the reassurance families need to know their children are safe.

We request you to stop the rollout of the new SNA rules immediately. We ask you to listen to the voices of parents, teachers, and SNAs who live this reality every day and who understand the true needs of children. We ask you to create a system that is fair, stable, and properly funded, one that can respond to children throughout the school year rather than within an artificial and narrow window.

Every child deserves to come home from school tired but happy, not broken by the effort of holding themselves together all day without support. Every parent deserves the reassurance that their child is safe and included. Every teacher and SNA deserves the resources to do their job without being stretched beyond what is humanly possible.

This is not simply a question of policy. It is a question of children’s futures, families’ well-being, and the kind of society we want to be. Please, we urge you to rethink these guidelines before further damage is done.
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