“It was brilliant from the start. I just thought it was great. The support I was getting, it was just brilliant. You can get support from anybody. You can turn to anybody for help. Where in mainstream school you couldn’t do that.”

Katie linked in with the Peter McVerry Trust Carline Centre in November 2020 and never looked back.

“I suffered bad with anxiety, and when I came here it was just like it disappeared. Even my exam results were just out of this world. Something that I didn’t see when I was in mainstream school.  It wasn’t like a student teacher kind of relationship, it was more like friends, you were able to get along with them.”

Since then, Katie has completed her junior certificate. “I went and done my junior cert and I think that’s what I was more proud of, that I was able to get there and do that.”