Children who are out of control come from families with serious problems and should be identified and helped when they are very young, according to the Institute of Guidance Counsellors
Yesterday a number of parents told the Today with Pat Kenny programme on RTE Radio 1 that their children were out of control and that they had been unable to get effective help for them.
There are no services for children expelled from school for disruptive behaviour, said the institute's spokeswoman, Ms Bernadette Fagan. Schools are extremely reluctant to exclude pupils and will usually only do so in cases of violence or other extreme acts, she added.
Seriously disruptive behaviour in children was usually linked to family problems, she said.
"I have never come across a kid who's generally out of control that there haven't been huge family problems and huge difficulties with parents." The institute's members work in most schools in the State. While guidance counsellors help schoolchildren to choose careers, they also counsel children with difficulties, including problem behaviour.
Some parents - including parents interviewed yesterday by The Irish Times - say their home life is perfectly normal and that the child is the one with the problems.
But from Ms Fagan's perspective, children who are out of control "have definitely difficult backgrounds. They would already be out of control in the home." Parents in these situations, she says, may lack the ability or confidence to exercise control.
There is virtually no psychological service for primary schools, she says, although a number of appointments have been made very recently by the Minister for Education and Science.
She believes a strong intervention is needed by the psychological service at an early stage in the primary schools. There is a serious problem, she says, with primary school children who drop out before they get to second level.
Yet everybody who deals with the children knows who is going to get into trouble. "Junior infants' teachers can spot the kids who are going to need help."
The number of children who are out of control is difficult to estimate. The Garda Juvenile Liaison Scheme deals annually with more than 10,000 children and people up to 18 years of age.
Only a small minority of these are prosecuted. The Dublin Children's Court deals with about 1,100 cases a year, but this again may not reflect out-of-control behaviour so much as persistent or serious law-breaking.
That court committed 127 children to industrial or reform schools in the year ended last July, and this may provide a better indicator of the number of children who cannot be "contained" elsewhere. It suggests that the number for the whole country is not great.
At any one time there are about 12 children placed in care in the UK and Northern Ireland by health boards here which have no facilities for them. British homes can cost £100,000 or more a year per child.
Commenting on young adolescents with very disturbed behaviours, the Eastern Health Board says in its report on child care services in 1996: "The behaviour of these young people can place themselves and others at risk. Although not presenting in great numbers, when they do present their needs and the effects they have on the service in which they are placed are overwhelming."