Epilepsy Ireland have written to every school in the country providing them with a physical copy of our Education Information pack: A Resource for pre-schools, schools and colleges. We have also provided physical copies of our seizure first aid posters to each school, and an overview of how we can support educators to support children with epilepsy in the classroom.
With over 4,000 schools across Ireland, this significant mailout has been made possible thanks to sponsorship support from UCB Pharma – which have covered the costs of the printing and postage of these resources to each individual school.
We hope that the information provided will prove useful to schools across Ireland as they return to the classroom following the Christmas break and we would encourage schools with any queries about epilepsy to please contact their local Community Resource Officer. Details of local Community Resource Officers can be found by visiting the ‘Our Local Service’ section of our website.
We have carried out this exercise as part of our continued advocacy campaign calling for “Seizure Safe Schools”. First introduced as a key advocacy priority for Epilepsy Ireland (as identified by people with epilepsy and their families) in 2024’s general election, we believe that a much more proactive approach to epilepsy in the classroom needs to be taken.
With over 10,000 children living with epilepsy in Ireland, it is a reasonable to assume that every teacher and SNA at some point in their careers will be supporting a child with epilepsy. Therefore, we need to see policy changes to ensure that teachers are appropriately educated about epilepsy as part of their initial teacher training – and to have systems in place to have their training refreshed regularly over the course of their careers.
Alongside writing to every school in the country, we have also written to the recently appointed Minister for Education and Youth, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton seeking her support for this initiative. In our correspondence to the Minister, we have highlighted the different services and supports we already offer to support education providers – noting that the implementation of seizure safe schools wouldn’t be overly cumbersome due to this. The full correspondence to the Minister can be read and downloaded at the end of this article.
In addition, we have also written to every TD and Senator sharing the correspondence we have sent to the Minister and seeking their support for our Seizure Safe School campaign. We hope this is something that they will support, given the considerable number of children with epilepsy who will benefit across every constituency in Ireland.
If you would like to express your support for our campaign with your local TD and Senator, we have provided a template letter which can be read, downloaded and amended as appropriate at the end of this article. We would encourage you to amend this as appropriate to reflect your own personal experiences/connection to epilepsy. You can find details of your local TD and Senator by visiting the Oireachtas website.
We will provide further updates on this campaign on our website and social media channels as soon as they become available. In the meantime, we would like to express our thanks to UCB for their sponsorship support which made writing to each school possible. This is the second EI campaign that UCB have supported in recent months, following their support for increasing awareness of seizure first aid towards the end of last year. You can read more on this by visiting the 'News' section of our website.
If you need any support or information around your or your family member’s journey with epilepsy, do not hesitate to get in touch with your local Community Resource Officer. You can find their details by visiting the 'Our Local Services' section of our website.
Further Information
- Our Seizure First Aid posters can be found by visiting the ‘Seizure First Aid’ page on our website
- Our Education Information pack can be downloaded by visiting the ‘For Teachers’ page on our website
- To learn more about our “Seizure Safe Schools” campaign, visit the ‘Advocacy’ section of our website.
Note: The printing and distribution of the materials referenced above has been funded and sponsored by UCB Pharma. UCB Pharma has not been involved in the design or content of these materials – nor are they involved in the development of our ongoing campaign for Seizure Safe Schools.
