IPPN

Margaret is a Regional Director of the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), Dublin Region and a member of the NEPS management team. She has responsibility for four teams of psychologists providing service to 300 schools. In her early career she worked as a primary school teacher and was seconded to work with the Primary Schools Pilot Project team set up to develop a model of psychological service for primary schools. She has also worked as an educational psychologist in post primary schools.
Mental health promotion at national level is one of her responsibilities within NEPS. This includes critical incident response and she has recently overseen the revision of Responding to Critical Incidents Guidelines for Schools. She was a member of the inter-departmental group which developed Well-Being in Post-Primary Schools Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention published in 2013 and subsequently led the development of the Guidelines for Primary Schools published in 2015.
She has a special interest in Social Personal and Health Education and in the 1990s she was one of the first three teachers seconded to progress the development of the Stay Safe Programme followed by a joint leadership role in the development and piloting of the Walk Tall Programme for substance use education.