Outreach plan for inner city advised

FOUR out of 10 pupils in south west inner Dublin drop out of school before the age of 15, a report on children at risk in the area has found.

Drug abuse is also prevalent, with up to 1,000 intravenous drug users living in the area, the report from Focus Ireland and the South West Inner City Network says. A further 500 people are smoking heroin, many of them teenagers "coming down" from ecstasy.

The crime rate is three times that for the rest of Dublin and up to, five times the national rate.

The report, Focus on the Needs of Young People, calls for a rehabilitation programme for young people withdrawing from drugs. One to one counselling should be provided for young people at risk, and outreach services developed for people with difficulties in reading and writing, it says.

In addition, a monitoring service for early school leavers should be set up. Schools in the area estimate that one third of their pupils are in need of remedial education. In one ward, the proportion leaving school before the age of 15 is as high as 71 per cent.

Expense was always put forward as the excuse for inaction, but this was not the issue, according to Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, writing in a preface to the report.

"Where a child gets into trouble with the law and is put into the care of a special school for delinquent young people it costs up to £74,000 a year to keep that child in care. If that £74,000 were spent earlier in a child's career, on education and prevention, how much better off would the young Person, the family, the community and society as a whole be".