Dr. Aisling Gillen:

Yes, I would be delighted to do so. As Mr. McBride said, I lead the prevention, partnership and family support programme. Around 2013, within the Health Service Executive as it was at the time, we set out a question for ourselves and brought in people like the chief executive of Barnados, representatives of the Daughters of Charity and the chief executive of Pobal. Senior managers in the HSE asked what was needed to really advance family support services. As a result, our prevention, partnership and family support programme was born. It comprises a number of strands. Supporting parenting is the core business for all of us. Our business is supporting parents across the continuum of care. Sometimes it is providing top-up advice and support that we all need as parents. That support leads to mandating in the supervision of parents in more difficulty, for example, at the top end of the continuum. There is our corporate parenting piece, our children in care piece. We act in loco parentisfor over 6,000 children who are in the care of the State. In identifying what supporting parents means across the continuum of care and the evidence that tells us how best to support them, parenting 24/7 is a set of key messages based around four practitioners. If one is working with parents across the life cycle of a child and in different circumstances, what do we need to think about? For example, fathers matter. When I sit in on a case conference, I must ensure the voice of the father is heard in the room also.

My colleague has mentioned participation. There is a strand of work associated with it. We have trained 1,300 staff across the country in participatory practice with children and young people. In such training the child is put at the centre of decision-making in their own lives. Children are encouraged to be part of the decision-making process in how we design, develop, deliver and evaluate our services. We have many such examples.

Another piece is our area-based approach - the prevention, partnership and family support programme. As part of the continuum of services that Mr. Quinlan articulated, we have established within Tusla an early intervention pathway. We have put in place senior managers for prevention, partnership and family support within the 17 area management structures. Below them we have senior co-ordinators and co-ordinators who have established 99 child and family support networks across the country. We operate Meitheal, our early identification of need and practical help tool. We have many examples of parents who have stood out publicly. One striking example of success is a non-national lady who came to the country with her husband. Unfortunately, he left her with three very young children and no money. She was living in a flat complex that was burned out and ended up in homeless services, which was good because she ended up back in our services. she has been part of the Meitheal process for the past two years. When she came to the country, she could not speak English, but now she can. Her children are doing well and she is accessing training and employment.

Our high prevention piece is our creative community alternative whereby we work very hard to keep in the community children who are on the edge of care and children who are in care. That means that we view the child in the context of the family and the community.