The Department of Education has advertised for 10 posts as employee assistance officers to advise and help teachers with workplace and personal problems. This follows the announcement last year by the then Minister that a two-year pilot welfare service for teachers would be established.
The job of the employee assistance officers - who will be based in Dublin, Cork and in the Galway-Mayo-Roscommon area - will be to help teachers with personal problems which arise at school, in the home and elsewhere. The problems could arise from stress and ill-health caused by classroom or other professional difficulties, or from family, marital, financial, health, psychological and addiction problems outside the workplace.
