Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 17 December 2020

Public Accounts Committee

Caranua: Financial Statements 2019

11:30 am

Ms Rachel Downes:

There are complexities with it. Obviously, we are trying to strike the balance between working as an organisation with fiduciary responsibilities and a person-centred approach. These do not necessarily match for the organisation.

We have worked with 6,181 survivors. Some managed the process well and these survivors have had no issues with it and have been able to do it. Others have struggled with it. We have struggled at times as well to be able to give them the support required. We are a small organisation based on using telephones. Ideally, we would like to have more staff for face-to-face services. For example, we moved to a new premises in 2018. We were able to facilitate survivors coming into the office to meet us. We also started doing outreach to prison services. We continued our work in the deaf village and went to the UK. We have found that when a survivor is more vulnerable, the impact of a face-to-face meeting is far stronger. We are able to support the survivor in a more satisfactory way for the person's needs. It means that the funding and advocacy supports received from us are far better.

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