Mr. Packie Kelly:

The family resources centres and the national forum has been working for the last while on the transition from the current Family Support Agency to the new child and family support agency. As Professor Dolan said, we welcome the new agency. We believe it is a good move and provides for all the key players to work together. As part of that plan, we instigated our own initiative to provide training for all our co-ordinators and managers in the 106 family support agencies to ensure that they are all linked in terms of understanding the way forward and how we will all work together. We are currently building relationships with a range of new partners and with some current partners with whom we have always engaged. We have been examining the uniformity of the systems, particularly for referrals. We have also been looking at three-year work plans to reflect the work and focus of the new agency. Family resource centres envisage their role to be that of supporting families when they are in crisis but also, crucially, when they are not in a crisis. The audience for the services of family resource centres are families who have found themselves in the social welfare system for whatever reason but also families who are on the verge of being in the system, and that relates to the aspect of early intervention and prevention. The job of family resource centres is to support families in the system but also those moving out of the system.

The key issue for us in the move to the new agency is to maintain a focus on family support. One of our concerns, which is held by a number of others, is that the new child and family support agency could be seen as just a child protection agency, which clearly it is not. The Minister and people such as Gordon Jeyes also hold that view. We have a responsibility, as have all the players and the members as legislators, to make sure that does not happen.

We seek to ensure that the legislation that will come before the members in the near future will be focused on family support. We would like some of the elements of the Family Support Agency Act transferred into the new legislation, but we will speak to the members on that in the near future.

We look forward to working with the new agency.

We see it as a major challenge. It is an important piece in ensuring that families that find themselves in difficulties or that have problems have a wide range of support and all the key players are at the table.