Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Noel Kelly, programme manager, Preparing for Life, Ms Eleanor McClorey, chief executive, youngballymun, Ms Hazel O'Byrne, projects officer, youngballymun, Ms Marian Quinn, chief executive officer, Childhood Development Initiative, and Mr. Mark Candon.

I thank the committee's vice-chairperson, Deputy Ciara Conway, who has agreed to act as a rapporteur on the issue of childhood poverty. This is our second meeting in a series on tackling childhood poverty.

Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. If they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in respect of a particular matter and they continue to so do, they will be entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and they are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise nor make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice, or long-standing ruling of the Chair, to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I remind members and witnesses that mobile telephones should be completely switched off for the duration of the proceedings as they interfere with the broadcast and also interference to our staff which is unfair. As this is also a workplace for members of staff, I would appreciate if all mobile telephones could be switched off rather than put on silent mode.

I invite Ms Eleanor McClorey, youngballymun, to make her opening statement.

Ms Eleanor McClorey:

We welcome this opportunity to speak to the committee on the theme of childhood poverty and on the youngballymun area-based strategy to tackle such poverty. This is an important opportunity to provide detail on the features of our model of work and early indications of the outcomes being achieved by practitioners and children in Ballymun. It is a great day for us to address the committee as Ballymun Kickhams have an important match coming up in a few days.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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We wish the team well in that. Deputy Lyons is looking forward to it too.

Ms Eleanor McClorey:

Today, we anticipate we will be celebrating our 1,000th Ballymun baby through the ready, steady, grow service and the parent child psychological support programme.

First, I want to provide some context and rationale around the imperative to implement comprehensive, area-wide, evidence-based approaches to tackling poverty. Social exclusion, poverty and intergenerational deprivation have major impacts on life outcomes. Social determinants at birth, including parents' education, health and housing status, are significantly correlated with children's educational attainment, health including mental health, employment chances and other significant life outcomes. High concentrations of need at area level impose significant burdens on children and families, on services, communities and the State.

A cycle of disadvantage is replicated, in part, because we are not investing in the right types of evidence-based supports to families to build protective factors and skills early enough in life and with sufficient consistency. Disadvantage is heavily concentrated in certain geographical areas and family level disadvantage is compounded by neighbourhood effects. Area-based approaches are critical to addressing this. Structural cause and effect mechanisms of poverty can be impacted on through whole-community integrated service strategies. We know what can work to counteract social determinants at birth. With an integrated service plan, appropriate capacity-building, sufficient motivation and focus, we can measurably improve life outcomes for children living in areas of social disadvantage and risk of poverty.

Youngballymun, along with our colleagues in Tallaght and Darndale, was established as a Prevention and Early Intervention Programme for Children in 2007. Jointly funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and the then office of the Minister for Children, we were tasked with designing and implementing a ten-year strategy to improve outcomes for children and families in Ballymun. To ensure a comprehensive lens was brought to planning the youngballymun initiative, we paid particular attention to the service design phase of the work. Partners from across the education, health and community sectors, as well as local parents and residents, were brought together to strategically map out the needs of the area and appropriate evidence-based responses. Our service design phase involved in-depth needs analysis across different ages and stages of development, the investigation of service strategies that had been proven to work in other contexts and in-depth reflection by local service providers on their roles in delivering measurably improved well-being and learning outcomes for children and families. The design phase resulted in the development of a comprehensive area-based service plan, comprising four interconnected programmes of work - infant mental health, quality early years practice, social and emotional development, literacy and language practice, and youth mental health.

Infant mental health is about activating the resources of parents in fostering healthy infant development through interventions by public health nurses, speech and language therapists and community practitioners. The quality early years practice is about developing capacity of early-years services in Ballymun to implement the Síolta quality framework and the high scope curriculum. The social and emotional development, literacy and language aspect involved interconnected programmes and initiatives to build capacity of parents, children and teachers to foster social and emotional development and language and literacy skills. The youth mental health aspect is about re-engineering, ensuring access to and building the capacity of youth and health services to actively promote and respond to young people's mental health.

There are a number of core features of the youngballymun model. The life cycle response is fundamental. We need to start from pregnancy and birth to build protective factors and set the right foundation. From this solid start, we continue to implement rigorous supports consistently in a child's journey through life in tandem with public services. Evidence-based approaches are at the heart of everything that we do. All the initiatives we implement have a strong basis in evidence and ongoing analysis of child and family outcomes is central. We must all invest in what we know will work.

Changing outcomes for children means building capacity of those they interact with to foster and nurture their growth and development in a conscious and informed way. This means parents, service providers and the wider community. Capacity building is the development of specific skills and competence in order to implement evidence-based practice and to work collaboratively. The practice changes that youngballymun promotes are taking place within existing systems - health services, schools, preschools and community groups. The embedding of practice in mainstream services allows universal reach to a whole community of children and also for the practice to be sustainable.

The youngballymun model is designed to be replicated. The approaches we promote can be scaled up in other communities interested in this way of working and we hope to be in a position in coming years to support that process. However, services are only cost effective when they deliver outcomes for children and families. All of our work has a keen eye to efficiency and effectiveness and we are committed to delivering results and demonstrating returns on investment. A value for money study forecasts return to the State of €4.50 for every €1 invested in youngballymun.

Outcomes to date from practice in Ballymun are encouraging. Successful examples include a 70% uptake of the parent-child psychological support programme which an evidence-based programme for babies up to the age of 18 months delivered in partnership with public health nurses and speech and language therapists. Early indications suggest that the proportion of babies demonstrating secure attachment, which is a strong indicator of a resilient protective factor, is greater than that of typical population samples. We have published the evaluation of our early years three-four-five service and it indicates that measurable improvements have been achieved in the quality of service provision. Children who have participated in a junior and senior infant social and emotional classroom curriculum, the incredible years programme, have shown reduced hyperactivity and conduct and peer problems, and increased pro-social behaviour. In parallel, parents participating in the incredible years parenting programmes exhibit significantly lower levels of stress and depression following the programme. These improvements are largely sustained at the six month follow-up point. Increased time is being spent on literacy in schools and pupils’ literacy scores have improved across the primary school community. The number of children in the lower percentiles has decreased and first class children in Ballymun are now achieving reading scores above national averages.

The programme for Government acknowledges the importance of drawing on a strong evidence base and reconfiguring existing services to fundamentally reform our approach to child poverty. This is reiterated by the 2013 budget commitment to an area-based approach to tackling child poverty. Youngballymun is an active working model of how an area-based strategy to tackle child poverty is delivering real results for children in the real world context of Ballymun. The establishment of the child and family support agency, the new service commissioning strategies across the HSE, the priority given to evidence, the development of family support service pathways nationally and a renewed policy focus on supporting parents offer important opportunities for policy and practice integration locally. We look forward to working with the Department of Children, the child and family support agency, primary care providers and other partners in prevention and early intervention to develop practice and share learning.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms McClorey for the work she is doing and wish her well next Sunday in Croke Park. She has a strong advocate in Deputy Lyons, who hopes to attend the meeting later today and sends his apology for not being here for her presentation.

Ms Eleanor McClorey:

I thank the Chairman.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I apologise to members that I will have to leave at 11.30 p.m. with Deputy Ó Caoláin. We have another meeting to attend elsewhere. I welcome Mr. Noel Kelly, programme manager with parenting for life.

Mr. Noel Kelly:

In case the committee falls down on the side of one team on Sunday, I am a Roscommon man and we should not forget that St. Brigid's wears the same colours.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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In the interest of balance, he is probably right.

Mr. Noel Kelly:

As a Cork man, the Chair should recognise that.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Naughten could use the reminder.

Mr. Noel Kelly:

I do not propose to rehearse our background because Ms McClorey has done a good job in setting the scene for the prevention and early intervention programme, the methodologies we have used and the principles we are following. I will instead speak briefly about our programme and the prevention and early intervention network.

Our programme is based in the Dublin 17 area. Typically it is attached to Darndale but it covers a wider area including Priorswood, Bonnybrook and Kilmore West. We decided in 2004 that we needed to do something about the number of children in our area who were not school ready when they started primary level. We commissioned a study using the early development instrument and found that more than 50% of the children demonstrated deficiencies in critical areas relating to school readiness. We engaged in a planning process which was similar to that described by Ms McClorey with all of the health, education and community partners to identify what we could do in our community to address this deficiency and help children. We collectively decided to develop a discrete programme focused on supporting families and parents.

Our hypothesis is that if parents are adequately supported during pregnancy and the early years of a child’s life, this will lead to improved outcomes for children, their families, schools and wider society. Waiting until children arrive in school before intervening leads to a range of negative outcomes for children and their families which begin to manifest themselves as soon as the child starts school. Many of these negative outcomes continue to be a drain on resources throughout the child’s life and impact on his or her ability to fully engage. We wanted to test the efficacy of investing in and supporting parents during pregnancy and preschool years. We are carrying out a random control trial over that period of time. Random control trials are governed by a range of restrictions and rules and we can only release outcomes when we have full sets of data. As we currently have outcomes for six, 12 and 18 months, I can share this information with the committee.

The areas on which we are predominantly focused with parents are child development and parenting. We are using a rigorous process including Triple P, which is an international evidence-based parenting programme. In the area of child development we are using all the information that the HSE has made available but we are packaging it differently to make it accessible to families. The programme is based on working with families in their own homes. The vast majority of families, or approximately 80%, agree to work in their own homes but if that is not their preferred option we will work with them in community settings. We are also supporting all of the early year settings in our area to improve their quality. We have participated in the Síolta quality framework and we are delighted that six of our services have been accredited by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. Our intervention with families is holistic and takes place on a wide variety of levels. It includes physical health, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language and literacy and cognition and general knowledge. We are trying to support parents and their children across these areas. The Geary institute in UCD is working with us on our research and a number of international people are also involved. Members may be familiar with Richard Tremblay, an associate professor in UCD, who is leading this part of the research.

We are finding significant results after six, 12 and 18 months in a number of important areas. We are starting to find significant results in cognitive development of children in both growth and fine motor skills. We are also seeing a number of positive developments in parenting. One of the parenting outcomes is that parents are less hostile towards their children. There is a detrimental effect on children's growth if parents have a hostile relationship with them. Reducing hostility improves the parent-child relationship. We are also seeing improvements in home environments so that children are being brought up in more stimulating and safer environments. There are significant improvements in interactions between parents and children, in social support for parents and in the health of the children.

In the current climate we are very conscious that obesity and child health represent a major issue. Diet needs considerable attention in communities such as ours because, unfortunately, many of the children would not have a very rounded diet and we are working effectively with parents on that.

From a medical point of view, we have also had some very significant birth outcome impacts where the number of women who had caesarean sections at birth was significantly below the national average and the number of women who had induced labour was also significantly lower. The medical community has got quite excited about this because it has failed to impact on those areas. The work we did with parents during pregnancy seems to be the factor that has made a big impact there.

We will continue to work with these families. The first of the children started school in September and the rest of the children in the study will start in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Unfortunately, our final results will not be available until the last child arrives in school, but we are incrementally releasing the results. At the moment we have our six, 12 and 18 months' reports which are available on our website - I flagged that on the document I submitted to the committee.

Nationally, 25 organisations are involved in prevention and early intervention work. Over the past two years we have formed a network, the Prevention and Early Intervention Network, which has become a very vibrant and active network which has gained considerable traction. We have had considerable communication with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, with politicians and policy makers. We are delighted with the interest in this area at the moment, as Ms McClory said. It is a very rich environment for child policy at the moment and we want to contribute our piece. We all collectively believe that investment in early intervention and prevention will, in the long term, produce better outcomes for children, families and for the country as a whole. I have some cards on the Prevention and Early Intervention Network and if members are interested, details of the work and research we are doing are available on our website.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Kelly - it is good to renew his acquaintance again.

Mr. Noel Kelly:

We met on the sidelines over the years.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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It was many years ago.

I now call Ms Marian Quinn, chief executive officer of Childhood Development Initiative.

Ms Marian Quinn:

I have no football analogy for which I am deeply sorry. I feel very bereft - I will get a whistle next time. I live and work in an area that is not doing terribly well in any sporting domain. I thank the committee for the opportunity to present today. Given what Ms McClory and Mr. Kelly have already said, there are things I do not need to repeat. We appear the morning after a new pope has been elected. His commitment to anti-poverty measures and social reform is worth noting given that the focus this morning is on how we can respond to child poverty. Some synergies may well yet emerge.

We know the Government and its predecessors have had a commitment to prevention and early intervention. The research is consistent on the costs and benefits, and the purpose of prevention and early intervention. The three organisations appearing before the committee this morning are seeking this, and the programme for Government's commitment to area-based responses offers the opportunity to maximise the investment made, to utilise the learning we now have with a view to ensuring that we best support children, families and communities in improving outcomes. Having said that, the context for the work CDI does in Tallaght west is very similar to the work in Ballymun and Darndale. The communities are very similar, which is why we were chosen. When the profile of the populations was considered in 2006-06, they were identified as three of the most disadvantaged communities.

We also went through a process that Mr. Kelly and Ms McClory both described for their areas, which was a very significant consultation and needs assessment, which in the case of Tallaght resulted in the document, How are our Kids? In 2006, Senator Zappone made a presentation to this committee and last year we had the opportunity to present the document, How are our Families?, to this committee, which was a repeat of that work and another comprehensive insight into life for children and families in a disadvantaged community. Both of those reports provide a framework for the work CDI is doing in Tallaght west. That process across the three organisations that lead on the prevention and early intervention programme needs to be a core element of any area-based response to child poverty.

As a result of the How are our Kids? report, we developed a number of services to respond to the priority needs. I will not outline them in detail as they are listed in the presentation, but I can respond to questions on them. We have eight independent evaluations, seven services with very specific outcomes identified, all of them being researched very rigorously, three through randomised control trials. Five of our evaluations have now been completed and published and the reports for those five are all available on our websites. We also have a policy paper for each of our evaluations and I have brought copies of those. They identify the key outcomes, findings, recommendations and policy implications. If people are interested, I can come back to any of those individual pieces of work.

After six years and having completed and published five of the eight independent evaluations, there are some recurring themes. They can be taken on the basis of the individual child and what we know about what helps individual children to achieve their maximum development. We also know there are things that happen at a family level, very importantly at a service level and also at a community level. Mr. Kelly and Ms McClory both talked about some of the outcomes for individual children and again we can talk to some of that, particularly regarding some of our speech and language, and literacy initiatives. At a family level the kinds of interventions all three of us have been doing are resulting in improved home learning environments with parents feeling more confident and able to engage to support their children's development all of which is very important. At a service level all three organisations have taken responsibility for co-ordinating, enabling and supporting an interagency approach to the needs of children and families in the community.

The work has identified some deficits that need to be addressed in terms of the pre-service and in-service training of professionals who work with children. All of our services work with professionals, who are qualified, well trained and well supported. Regarding all of our services, including those working with teachers, early-years providers, social care workers or youth workers, every one of our evaluations found that the professionals felt ill equipped to effectively engage with parents. Some really important policy recommendations need to be considered if we are all to be best fitted and best able to engage with children and families effectively.

My presentation deals with our approach to child poverty in Tallaght west. We do not believe it is possible only to work with the child. There is an ecological approach where we know that we also have to engage with the family and we have to engage at a community level. Poverty is at the root of dysfunction and disengagement, and underpins all the negative findings that our three communities have demonstrated for decades. There needs to be an economic response as well as individual child and family responses.

We have set out what we believe are really core processes that have enabled CDI in Tallaght west and all the other two sites to begin to develop, deliver and evaluate effective responses to child poverty. It needs to start with that interagency approach. That requires leadership, commitment and buy-in. The buy-in is about being prepared to do things differently. We know that for 20 years in Tallaght west there has been massive investment in children and families.

Every service one could ever want is in Tallaght west but we also know that until the last decade, there was no change in outcomes for children and families. Business as usual has not worked. It is not just about money or extra money. It is about changing the core of what we do and how we do it. Some of those processes are set out. I thank the committee.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Quinn for coming before the committee again. I welcome Mr. Mark Candon and thank him for coming in at short notice. He is joined by Mr. Gary Gannon.

Mr. Mark Candon:

My name is Mark Candon. I was asked last night to speak to the committee so my presentation will not be anywhere near as refined and smooth as those who have gone before me. In terms of a football analogy, it occurs to me in listening that we all play what is put in front of us. I walk in every day as a teacher and that is what is in front of me and what I must deal with. Mammy gets up in the morning, there is one child bouncing off this wall and another off that wall and that is what Mammy must deal with. I will continue on from where Ms Quinn finished. Colleagues here spoke about the three areas. We are from the inner city, if I may be so bold as to say. We are the original and best but what is interesting is that we might have been forgotten. I am fascinated by and watch very carefully what is going in these areas, such as Limerick Regeneration. I am always digging for ideas. Although we had Tony Gregory at one stage and social partnership grew out of it and we had different organisations like the Inner City Organisations Network, I am jealous of the focus, organisation and direction I see growing in these organisations. Ms Quinn made the point that it is business as usual and it has not worked. This is a great place to start.

We launched a report last week entitled "The Boundary Wall". A group of us got together out of a slight sense of frustration. It involved those of us working in schools and early years education and all the organisations dealing with children and young people in the community getting together to ask the community and children for their perspectives and what had changed. It is something of a mixed bag. From one perspective, we could say that things have really improved. As a principal in the senior boys school in Sheriff Street, I can say that the Celtic tiger hit us about 2006 and 2007. I was not getting an outbreak of impetigo and scabies every year in the school. We started having a little traffic jam at the gate in the evening. It dawned on me that no parents had cars up to the late 2000s. It came in around 2007 and 2008 and left in 2010 and we feel we are back in the struggle against poverty again.

I could tell the committee that I inherited a school that was in bits, which was true. It had a daily attendance rate of 84% and in ten years, we moved that to 94%. When I inherited the school, the percentage of children missing 20 days or more in 2005 was 28% to 30%. In 2010, this percentage was 10%. That is all marvellous and makes great headlines in newspapers but it is not working. I concur with my colleagues here. I am very interested in Mr. Kelly's work with early years - the age group between 0 to 3 referred to in the curve by James Heckman from the Geary Institute. I would come back to what Professor Kathleen Lynch said at our launch, which is that equality of opportunity can only be gained when there is greater equality of condition. In our country, we have a top and a bottom. I use the Celtic tiger analogy again but it fascinated me to see kids in certain families in 2007 and 2008 showing up regularly on time because perhaps Daddy got a job doing a bit of scaffolding and there was a bit of work for Mam. Suddenly people had some hope. We try to run what we do on respect, hope and trust. These people have done a fantastic job.

We are hearing about a bottom-up effort and bottom-up striving. Unless it is led from the very top - this is a small country - I do not know whether we will achieve the outcomes we need. The outcomes I need, because I will retire in about 15 years time, are to avoid a pension crisis. That means all the lads in my school must do well and get jobs so that my public service pension can be paid. We all think from our own perspective. I appeared in a programme called "Townlands" in 2000 or 2001. I spoke about what these people are talking about, namely, a continuum of support from the cradle onwards. One sees the anger in young people because I am telling kids that if they come to school and work hard, they will do well. Lads have come back and told me that they worked hard but that it did not happen for them. That is what Ms Quinn says and is so true. In North Wall, we had a load of unemployed dockers and seamstresses by 1980. When I look at all the things we have done, today we have exchanged that for a load of unemployed painters and decorators trained in FÁS and unemployed hairdressers.

The challenge is there. I agree with all of the early years stuff but to make it work, I suggest that any report produced by the committee needs, to use a terrible phrase, a tsar. I need to be accountable. I do not need to sit in the North Wall Education and Welfare Group and have a veto because I need to protect and manage my little school and because I must fight with somebody next year to get funding. Technically, we have subsidiarity so we are watching each other all the time. This the way all of us must do business. We are all concerned about where the next bit of money will come from and how we do this and that. Policy is so interesting because we get policies that really work for us and at the same time, we get other policies that work against us. I was talking to Mr. Gannon on the way over and we said that there is some great work going on in the new Department of Children and Youth Affairs and we have a wonderful piece of legislation. I do not like my 15 year olds having guns hidden in the back of the garden, which is pretty much a reality. Services like SWAN Youth Service make a huge difference in this regard. These are kids with challenges but SWAN Youth Service helps keep them off the street and out of prison. However, its budget has been cut by €65,000. We need a tsar. It needs to be at the level of the Taoiseach's or Tánaiste's office. It need to look at areas like Waterford, Limerick, Cork, Ballymun and Tallaght. It also needs to look at the inner city. I said to Mr. Gannon that North Wall is very small and has only 2,000 people but perhaps the inner city could be looked at. They need to come in, look at services and say there needs to be some rationalisation and focus and start in terms of what Mr. Kelly is talking about with building resilience and supporting families.

Our frustration results from us knowing what we can do. It is about making it happen. Unless this is led from the very top of whatever Government is in power, it will not work. We often talk about the Finnish experience. They do the following things well - structure, planning and strategy. Perhaps it is not an Irish thing but it is something we do not do as well. Finland got rid of its inspectors in 1995. It had a banking crisis and put the money elsewhere in education. To support the excellent work that is ongoing, we need to try as best we can to maintain the funding and supports we have but to develop and get where we want to be. Our vision is children going to college and being happy and sustaining those communities. It needs to be led from Dáil Éireann, the Government of the day and the Taoiseach and Tánaiste's offices.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Candon for his very challenging presentation.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I will come back later if that is OK.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I join with the Chairman in welcoming our guests this morning. I do not have a series of questions to pose to the delegation. In respect of many communities the length and breadth of the country, we listened in awe and hope because what the delegation has explained and outlined is a template. That is the real message. It is a powerful presentation that offers that hope. We know there are only three projects in the prevention and early intervention programme. I have spoken with some members of the delegation before and we know three further projects are promised. Communities in various locations, not just in this city but beyond, hope whether they can be one of those three.

Given that mine is a rural constituency, it is not likely to be included at an early point. I, therefore, ask about the capacity of the programmes which have been outlined by delegates. What numbers are engaged in delivery? There is a huge commitment in terms of home visitations. How does this translate in human resourcing terms? Perhaps they are not the right words to use, but what are the footfall and throughput? With how many can the programmes cope? Mr. Noel Kelly said a figure of 200 pregnant women was the starting point for Preparing for Life. What is the situation in relation to Young Ballymun? Can we be provided with comparisons? That is not to exclude anything other delegates said. Would any of them like to suggest this is a template that is only applicable to concentrated, urban areas, or will it have application in vastly rural areas? I represent the largest constituency geographically in the State. It stretches from a point ten miles from the Irish Sea to a point 25 miles from the Atlantic. The population is comparable to that in some of the major housing areas of Dublin. Can the programmes and initiatives cope with the extra pressures and challenges presented by a sprawling rural area?

This is all about preparing young children for life. Often times a failure of the past was to measure by reference to achievement. Measurement must be by reference to participation and equal opportunity. Mr. Kelly made a point about the utilisation of phraseology and making a strong start. The committee met Mr. Toby Wolfe just the other day to discuss Start Strong. I made the point then as an elected voice that more and more I was finding that young people were no longer able to access the fulfilling opportunities of sport, drama and music. Other colleagues will have seen this and heard it if not from their own children, then from other families. These are some of the early indicators of where poverty is really starting to bite. It is poverty when a child is denied access to activities that his or her peers continue to enjoy. It perpetuates the idea of the haves and the have-nots with which we all grew up and about which we know only too well from our own childhood memories. It must be addressed. The delegates are dealing with it at a very early point and there is no better place to start.

Jillian van Turnhout (Independent)
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I thank each of the groups for attending to discuss an issue I look forward to us trying to get under a little more. While we all agree on the need for early intervention and prevention, the difficulty often concerns early acknowledgement. We do not intervene until much later in the cycle for the child. We all know there is a problem, but the question is whether the supports are available to allow for intervention. The issue of return on investment is very important in the context of early intervention in a child's life. Equally, we know that if we do not follow up early investment with investment at other stages in a child's life, the return on investment is hugely reduced. All too often, we focus on only one part of a child's life, not on the journey he or she undertakes.

There are difficulties with the area-based approach to tackling child poverty. Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin referred to children living in rural areas where there was consistent poverty. It is not just a problem in urban areas. There are particularly vulnerable groups, including Traveller and migrant children and children in families which have been disproportionately affected by budget cuts, including children of lone parents or in other groupings. Part of me questions - I am being very upfront - the fact that each of the pilot schemes on which presentations were made adopted very different approaches and programmes. While there are positivities in this, there are also difficulties for us in trying to evaluate them. How do we decipher the numerous evaluations and move forward with a model? One model takes the area-based approach, but how is it to be replicated in places that will not benefit from being one of the chosen areas? This is where we need to create a more national policy. The approach set out will involve the Government seeking philanthropic partners, but is that realistic with the exit of Atlantic Philanthropies from the sector? I do not see other major philanthropic partners appearing. It may be that there will be philathropy at project or community level, but the question arises as to whether a major philanthropic partner will emerge.

While the work the groups before us are doing is tremendous, the question arises as to how we can replicate it and avoid a territorial approach which is about each area looking to ensure its own survival. At our hearings on Tuesday we heard that there were too many pilot programmes. The issue is to look at the next step and determine how we can mainstream and widen programmes to ensure we get a return on investment throughout a child's life. We know about the life chances of children and teenagers living in poverty. It is important to look at the very early years and most times when people think of early intervention, they think of toddlers. I do not think of toddlers but of intervention throughout a child's life.

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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I thank the delegates for attending and making their presentations. I also thank them for the broad overview of their work. There are different approaches, but what emerges in common is that the pilot projects use services which are already available in communities. It was not just about what was being done but how it was being done. That is what has changed. We talk a great deal about inter-agency work, but I would like to tease out the difficulties which must be acknowledged. There are countless examples of people trying to do good things in particular pockets of communities. Mr. Mark Candon is perhaps an example of someone like this. However, these examples are very much personality driven. They are not matters of policy and will not, perhaps, be replicated elsewhere in the absence of these individuals. It is not good enough that it is left up to a personality. This is about how we deliver services as a state and a recognition that we all have a responsibility in delivering services to children.

My experience before being elected was as a social worker. Working with a family, I was the only professional across the services willing to visit the home. Other services might have a policy to issue two letters for speech and language services or a psychological assessment appointment for a chaotic family with poor literacy skills. The appointments are missed and the child then comes off the list. That issue would have been eradicated if other professionals were willing to come on a home visit with me and carry out an initial assessment. We tried to pilot that approach in Clonmel, but management moved on and in the absence of a policy, the practice stopped. There are professionals throughout the country sitting in offices waiting for people to attend appointments who never arrive. These professionals still get paid. It is a question of how we utilise the services we have available in our communities to best meet the needs of all children. We must acknowledge that while the phrase "inter-agency work" rolls off the tongue, it is hard to achieve. People are worried about giving away responsibility and budgets. We must adopt a service design approach to delivering community services. I would be interested to about the experiences of the delegates and their views on what we could do better to meet the needs of children nationally.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I thank the Chairman for allowing me time to make a few brief remarks, and I thank the witnesses for their presentation. To consider international comparators with regard to the area-based approach, I am most familiar with West Dunbartonshire in Glasgow, where, as opposed to waiting for the national government to churn out a policy eventually, local solutions were found when an individualised problem with literacy levels among children was identified. We may need a value shift in national policy. Other jurisdictions use different language and speak about moving towards the total eradication of illiteracy, whereas we speak about tackling educational disadvantage. Do we need to be more ambitious and use terminology that depicts child poverty as a disease which must be eradicated? Are we too comfortable with where we are?

What the witnesses are dealing with is a crisis of underachievement, disconnection, disempowerment and poverty. Unfortunately, when one digs deep into preventative approaches in projects involving children, there can be a great deal of fluff. Mr. Candon and I worked quite closely together in Sheriff Street for many years and had the misfortune to deal closely with the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. We learned quickly the value of taking a photograph of an impoverished-looking child while sitting behind a laptop; if one takes a photograph it looks like one is doing something. It is more difficult to have a long-term strategy that can dig deep to empower the child and his or her family to find a way out of this poverty. An evidence-based approach is needed. We have spoken previously about the Hart-Risley report and the differential between the oral language skills of a three-year-old in a professional family versus those of a three-year-old in a welfare family. We have spoken about maternal depression and isolation and the huge crisis this represents in certain areas of the country. One project, which I will not name, dealt with the percentage of infant children who decided their own bedtimes. These crucial areas have not made it into mainstream discussions on what has an impact on children.

Deputy Conway made a very good point that we cannot depend on the goodwill of an inspirational person. Many communities depend on such goodwill, but the State must step up to the mark. The State has been allowed off the hook by those who are willing to go the extra mile in their communities, but this is not good enough any more. Far too many services know the boundaries of their responsibilities and are very keen to stress them. These include the HSE, education services and housing authorities dealing with estate management in various communities. None of these agencies seems to have a mechanism for speaking to any other. I am taken with Mr. Candon's suggestion of an overall tsar who might be able to knock heads together and start delivering benefits for children. Parental empowerment is key.

How would this be mapped over a prolonged period of time? Early intervention strategies can show great results in the fifth or sixth year of a child's life. How is this maintained over a long time when a child begins to plateau at the age of ten in primary school and cannot move to the next level of literacy that is needed to tackle secondary education? Do we need a 20 or 30-year strategy to tackle child poverty? Is there something the political system can do collectively? Party politics is one thing, but child poverty is far too important for us to play politics with, and it should not change every five years with a change of government. Do we need a plan we can all buy into for eradicating child poverty? I would be interested to hear the views of the witnesses on this.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome our guests and thank them for their presentation. I apologise for missing some of it but I thank them for forwarding their documents prior to the meeting. Listening to what previous speakers said, I got the impression that there is concern about the future viability of certain projects and there is a lack of inter-agency working relationships. This is a pity, because at a time of scarce resources it should not be a question of protecting one individual project over another; we need to ensure that scarce resources are put to their proper use, which is to protect children and families that urgently need to be protected. It was interesting to hear what Mr. Candon said about having somebody in an overarching position to take control and ensure the resources get to the people for whom they are intended. Senator van Turnhout spoke about the return on investment. Are the witnesses are happy with the level of return?

Ms Eleanor McClorey:

To pick up on what Mr. Kelly and Ms Quinn were emphasising, the cohesive nature of the thinking underpins the unique way in which each strategy was developed. One can get lost in the individual differences at surface level between Tallaght, Darndale and Young Ballymun, but we welcome these differences because they have allowed us to develop various types of learning which we can contribute to the collective pot. It would have been deeply regrettable if this money had been invested in doing the same thing three times over. Without getting into the detail, which my colleagues have covered very well, there are cohesive factors, particularly with regard to strategic planning, evidence of need, evidence-based responses to these needs and ways of engaging with an entire community, whether we are talking about children aged up to three years, people across the life-cycle or any other combination.

Deputy Ó Caoláin made observations about concentrated areas, mainstreaming throughout the country and rural disadvantage. We must first ask what the evidence tells us. I will not stray too far from the territory I am confident I know, having worked in this area since 2007, because I do not want to make overreaching statements that I cannot verify. I can state that in concentrated urban areas of disadvantage, as Mr. Candon, Ms Quinn and Mr Kelly have articulated, significant State investment is made in dislocated silo-based health, education and community and voluntary service strategies. In our view it is not so much that the State does not spend enough money - although additional investment will always be welcome - but that there is a fundamental question about how this money is strategically managed and whether an integrated service strategy is in place. We know integrated service strategies are not in place in areas of rural or urban disadvantage throughout the country. In the mainstream sectors of health, education and youth and community services, it is a question of embedding in various ways the evidence-based practices that will change outcomes. With at least two former school principals sitting in the room, I state very cautiously that we know that changing teaching practice in the classroom will change literacy levels. We know investing in children's social and emotional development, particularly from birth or very early in childhood, will demonstrably improve their learning outcomes and mental health outcomes.

The Incredible Years programme is one example but there is also the Doodle Den programme in Tallaght. There are examples of improving literacy in the classroom and parallel initiatives to improve literacy with classroom and teacher efforts. I make the assumption that the international evidence on teaching practice could be transferred to any school or community, regardless of whether it is urban or rural. That is based on rational assumptions rather than hard evidence.

Childhood Development Initiative, Preparing for Life and ourselves collaborated extensively on the Síolta process. It would be reasonable to assume, based on evidence, that early years centres in rural settings - if they embody an evidence-based curriculum like High Scope and the Síolta quality assurance framework - will almost definitely improve child outcomes with the quality of early years provision. The nature of services and populations are dispersed. For example, in an urban environment in Ballymun, families in the community were traditionally described as not engaging with service providers. When we set up the child development clinic, the conventional wisdom was that families would not engage, which is completely untrue, as families will absolutely engage with services if they are relevant to their needs and delivered respectfully. That culture of respect, equality and participation is required, with the parent seen as an expert on their child. There must be respect for what parents know, their capacity and their commitment in very difficult circumstances. That can be transferred across other areas.

Senator van Turnhout commented on how to bring all this learning together. There are diverse ways of implementing area-based strategies and, for example, in Young Ballymun, we focused mainly on embedding practice in mainstream services. We put much of our time and attention into that. Other strategies can go with this, and in Preparing for Life there was an emphasis on home-based visitation. We did not test that as we tested clinic-based services. It is about really considering in a coherent way the programme rather than asking if this or that works.

What we have collectively stated is that there must be a collaborative planning process that engages all key stakeholders before making a decision on what is being done. The process is as important as the programme. The programme is the evidence-based strategy that the community decides to implement but the process is how to get there. The process will significantly influence the level of participation, ownership and buy-in, which is another important lesson.

There must be strong national leadership with samples of anonymised records. The point was made that child poverty cannot be addressed without addressing family poverty. Children live in families so a child will not emerge from being poor on its own; the child will only become "not poor" if there is an integrated economic strategy. There is an opportunity in the Government, a new focus on jobs and where economic investment has not been made, to integrate children services strategies with economic investment. Others on the panel have made that point clearly. Children do not end up poor accidentally and we tried to emphasise in our presentation the causal aspects.

We can respond to points collectively. There were points about maternal depression and children finding their own bedtimes, etc. When we really engage with families during pregnancy and the early stages after birth, as we have through our Ready, Steady, Grow service and the child development clinic, along with the efforts of partners, we really get a sense of the struggle. Maternal depression can be a biological and medical factor in any pregnancy or birth but environmental stress and financial anxiety, as well as conflict in the family and domestic violence, can massively compound maternal depression. It is a critical risk factor for child outcomes. Rather than assumptions on children going to bed on their own, there is really a need to consider holistically the needs of parents and responses, where possible, to support parents and children's well-being.

There is the issue of investment and sustainability. We have designed Young Ballymun as a ten year change strategy. There will be embedding of mainstream practice across the community, which is why sharing models with other communities is so important. One must build up synergy and a movement across the country to build sustainability in future. The emerging policy context around children is very important and if that could be matched with an economic and employment strategy for extremely disadvantaged areas, it would be all the better.

Mr. Noel Kelly:

I will not go over the points so eloquently made by Ms McClorey. When we started planning what we might do in our area, the possibilities were enormous and we could have taken many approaches. We quickly decided that the greatest resource in a child's life is a parent, parents or grandparents. As a State and people, we have ignored that for so long and we have not invested in parents. Any time we have a difficulty we invest in professionals and parachute people in to try to resolve the problem. Our belief is that we must invest in parents appropriately, at the right time and, as Ms McClorey indicated, through the life cycle. The process must be continued as children get older. My parents had very little education but I am here because my mother had a dream that I would do better than she did. I grew up in a rural area and we had nothing. If we can get parents to have ambition and help them in realising that ambition, it will provide the greatest chance for any child. Other significant adults are also good but the parent is key.

I am jumping around because I do not want to make points made by Ms McClorey already. Families' confidence in services has not been discussed today, and unfortunately, families have very little confidence in many services. In many cases that is driven by poor behaviour from professionals and professionals not being willing to meet families in their own home. Somebody mentioned this morning a fear of going into a family's home, which is absolute nonsense. A tiny percentage of families in the country may be involved with serious crime but my staff visit families who are very welcoming. Nevertheless, these families need to know who we are, why we are there, what the business is and how they will be treated. Unfortunately, families in our areas have often been burned when investing in professionals because the professional has moved on. It is an issue for some of our services, particularly social workers, as families referred to social workers need stability but often do not get it. They may be bumped from one person to the next.

That is why we decided on a five year investment in these families. With some of the families it has taken a year to two years to get to the stage where they trust us. They must see that we will be consistent in returning and being fair and friendly. It has taken us generations to get where we are and we will not be able to fix the problem quickly. We should not jump at solutions. Ms McClorey already made the point that there is very little expertise in the area, so it would be unfair to expect the three of us to suddenly formulate a solution. We are coming up with some really good ideas and certain elements work.

However, we have looked at the international scene and there is very little evidence internationally of area-based approaches really being effective.

The next point is long-term investment in families. I have made the point already that many of the things we have done in Ireland have been based on a quick fix. I have been working in this area for 30 years and, unfortunately, in my experience quick fixes do not work. They might work with families with a very high capacity, where a short intervention can work. For most of our families, however, more is required.

Inter-agency working was mentioned. We are at the tip of the iceberg in that regard. Both Ms Marian Quinn and Ms Eleanor McClorey went a little deeper in the asks they made of the agencies. We find that the agencies are with us on this but the real challenge comes in the next phase when we get on to the area-based strategy in our area and when we will put the finger on their shoulders and tell them we want them to do X or Y, to release some of their staff, to stop doing things they are doing already and to do them differently. That will be very challenging. In many professions, the focus is on the professionals rather than the families. We must change the rules of the game. We are here to serve the families. Fair enough, we need good working conditions and we must be treated fairly but, unfortunately, much of our energy and dialogue is about what is happening in the professions rather than what is happening with families.

It would be remiss not to make the point that it is really challenging to work with approximately 20% of our families. Even though our way of working is very different from that of many other agencies, we still find it very challenging to work with those families. These families' lives are quite chaotic and, in some case, they become disempowered. They have nearly been over-serviced by agencies. We carried out an audit in our area when we started, and there are 63 potential services available to children and families. That would be quite confusing for somebody who has a doctorate, so imagine how it feels for parents. They really do not understand the difference between one group and another. We must narrow down the field, and Mr. Mark Candon already made this point. We must get to the stage where everybody must make a serious commitment to a percentage of families and do it well. I question the value of doing a little with lots of families.

We have traditionally worked from a deficit model, so we have put services in when we find problems. We have to work from a strengths model. Both Ms Marian Quinn and Ms Eleanor McClorey have made that point. We should be able to say to every family: "You have got strengths. We are going to find those strengths and work with you on them." By working on those strengths one deals with the deficits. Families have traditionally seen that services only come when they have a problem. That immediately creates a negative mindset. We need to turn that around, so there is a positive mindset. Unfortunately, many of our agencies work on serious, tough problems all the time. That is quite demoralising for staff as well. Staff need to have the space to work on positive things.

To respond to Deputy Troy on the return on investment, when we are finished we have a commitment from James Heckman, who is the world master, to do a cost-benefit analysis of our programme. He has already started to look at the data. Unfortunately, it is quite challenging in Ireland because many of the things that happened in Ireland were never costed. We do not know what it costs if a child goes into care or a social worker is engaged with a family. We can cost things such as education because we know what the cost is per pupil. Some estimates and guesstimates will have to made on that, and perhaps by looking at what is happening in the UK, our nearest neighbour.

We must look at best use of resources. We have to start challenging every organisation working with families to show evidence of how they are using State money to produce best outcomes. At present, people report on numbers. I am a teacher and I have worked in education. People are really concerned with numbers and percentages, but it must go deeper than that. We can get the percentage of children turning up in school to increase, but if the quality of what is happening in school is not good, it does not matter whether they are there or not. It will not change anything. We must change the rules of the game. Instead of looking for statistics and numbers, we must ask people who are getting funding to show how what they are doing is producing outcomes. We know, because of the research we are doing into our work, and we will be able to state that we know that what we have done has produced a certain outcome. Unfortunately, very few people can do that.

I will conclude on that point. There is much detail in what the members have asked us, but the one thing I caution them against is jumping at a solution. The UK jumped at Sure Start. It had success in one or two areas so it rolled it out, but it has failed miserably in many areas. Just because ourselves, young-Ballymun or CDI might find something really exciting, it does not mean it is the answer for everybody. We must be more cautious.

Ms Marian Quinn:

I will respond on four issues - there are too many pilots, the inter-agency work, models of delivery and our policy framework.

There was a question about whether there are too many pilots and how to determine what works. The Centre for Effective Services, which is 50% government funded with the remainder coming from philanthropy, is tasked with extracting the findings across the range of evaluations. It has already begun to produce thematic documents that draw on the evaluations across all of the grantees from the network Noel Kelly referred to. While there is no one size fits all, we know a good deal about what works. There is a point where we need to commit to only evidence-based, proven models of delivery. That brings us to the thorny issue of not when do we stop taking on new pilots but when do we stop doing something that we have done for 20 years but which has no impact.

One of the pieces of work we delivered in west Tallaght was proven not to work. It was a pro-social behaviour programme and evidence based. It was tested through a randomised control trial and there was a very rigorous evaluation. The evaluation was the same as our Doodle Den programme, which had great outcomes. However, in our pro-social behaviour programme, children were measured on 21 outcomes. Sixteen of the outcomes were what is called flatline, where nothing changed, and three of the outcomes were moving in the wrong direction. We had to stop delivery of that programme. The people engaged in the programme - the children, parents, teachers who referred children to it and the youth workers who delivered the programme - all engaged knowing it was a test, that it was a short-term piece of work and that we would find out whether it could be integrated. They were given hard evidence that it was not working, was at best making no difference and might not be helping at all, but people said: "I do not believe you. I do not believe the research. I like what I am doing and I am working really hard at it. I am really trying to make a difference here." Therefore, believing that trying to make a difference does not necessarily mean one is making a difference is very difficult for us. One of the questions that policymakers and managers need to start grappling with is not just about how to start taking on new things, but how to stop doing the things that make no difference.

That brings me to models of delivery. Certainly, there is an issue regarding where and how services are delivered. We are beginning to learn that for some families it is necessary to do much more outreach. We cannot expect people to come to us. That raises questions about how much of our work is about developing the capacity of families to engage and also, critically, how much of the work is about helping us, as service providers, to be more effective in how we engage. It is not always the family's problem or their fault. It is not always the family that must change. Sometimes we, as service providers, managers and the people who design these structures, are the people who need to do a little re-thinking. Part of that raises questions about the skill of managers in being able to grapple with negotiating that. I was a fairly senior person in the HSE and had responsibility for many service level agreements. There was never a place where I had an engagement with the people to whom we were giving very significant amounts of funding in which we talked about whether what the service was doing was what the community needed, whether it was achieving the outcomes or whether we even knew the outcomes we were trying to achieve through the very large budget being given by the HSE. There is the issue of people who are decision-makers, particularly budget holders, having the capacity, accountability and authority to have those negotiations and to ask those questions.

With regard to inter-agency working, the children's services committees, which are established now in 16 counties and which will be a core part of how the child and family support agency works, are a critical structure.

They are tasked with ensuring integrated service planning and delivery and if we are talking about the tsar, or what we in CDI like to call scrutiny and support - and we need both - in the context of where it is held, the children's services committees offer us a good opportunity.

Mr. Mark Candon:

Responding to the points of the Vice Chairman, it is an issue of massive frustration for many of us plodders involved in service delivery, or what Lipsky called street-level bureaucrats. If I have a child who must attend a psychologist or a psychiatrist and the child does not like the office, we are between a rock and hard place. The mountain will not go to Mohammed and Mohammed has no intention of going back to the mountain. When I talk about a tsar and knocking heads together, it is to get by this stuff and get it organised. It is not that some people, within their own groups, agencies and professions, do not do great work. We have talked for years about inter-agency work and linking up. This goes back to social inclusion and Departments working together. There were interdepartmental committees about social inclusion and we are waiting for it to filter down to us. These remain the frustrations and that is where we need to draw it together. This must involve the Departments of Justice and Equality, Education and Skills, Children and Youth Affairs and Social Protection. There must be someone above all of that. In her presentation, Ms Marion Quinn referred to the nested model of family, the community and the child. They must also be a nested model of services. The first level is the school or the preschool, the next is the area within which they work, and there are other subsequent levels.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin referred to evidence-based policies, which I love, but a good researcher is someone who maintains a healthy scepticism about findings. One can have projects that may make certain findings but one really needs ten or 15 projects over time in different places. Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin referred to Dr. Tommy MacKay, our dear friend in West Dunbartonshire whom I would love to have a pint with, and 65,000 kids, all of whom read at nine years and six months as tested through Neale analysis. As a teacher, I would love to see how 65,000 kids can be tested using Neale analysis. It takes some time. Yesterday afternoon, I was at a homework club with a very bright child of ten or 11 years who is highly dyslexic. How will he end up reading at the level of nine years and six months when tested using Neale analysis? The Hart-Risley study is great, but let us look at the methodology and how it was done. We know things and we learn things, but let us be careful, because there is enough expertise in this country and among our own people to answer many of the questions.

The most wonderful thing was said at this meeting, which is that families will engage with services if they meet their needs and are delivered respectfully. We can bring a horse to water but we cannot make it drink. I referred to the Eithne Kennedy's Write to Read project, whose key secret is ongoing engagement. Gráinne comes in every second week so I must have my homework done for her, as the kids must have their homework done for me. That is the ongoing professional development and support. At the strategic working level, that is what keeps it sustained. Without one person, such as tsar I am talking about, saying that this is how we will do business, I do not see how we can make services deal respectfully with families. How long will it take to teach them?

Looking at the research in the educational field over decades, going back to the war on poverty, James Coleman did a major study and concluded that schools will not make a difference. For 40 years, there was research on school improvement and school effectiveness showing that schools make 8-15% of the difference. This is what Coleman said. We must change the rules of the game. We must start with a focus on the child. I am a wonderful person, if I say so. Next September or October, I must look at how I play the game to retain people or do this or do that, with the best will in the world. Policy-makers and legislators need to think at that level. How would we allow the chief superintendent in Store Street to work in a certain way so that his backside is covered? I need to know my back is covered because someone here is saying we should get together and work together. Without that, we are very limited in the outcomes we can truly achieve.

After 25 years teaching, at the start of which I was sent home because I wore an earring, and having started my teaching career at 15 or 16 with the old fella in Christ the King, Cabra, I have been looking at this all my life and seeing how different bits work together.

Regarding the trade of the Vice Chairman, which is social work, I would love to see support for Mountjoy Square, where there is a throughput of social workers. There is a caseload that cannot be handled and it is a finger-in-the-dam situation. I do not know if that makes sense. If we can draw these things together, we can potentially go forward.

Ms Hazel O'Byrne:

Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin is gone but he raised the issue of numbers and I wish to draw attention to a note we have on scale and scope. I am sure similar information is available from Tallaght and Darndale about the numbers of children and families we are working with. We are celebrating the 1,000th baby in the baby development service and working across all 11 primary schools and a number of preschools.

There are potentially difficulties with the way in which services are delivered and professionals operate but there is also major potential, massive engagement and a willingness among service providers to put children and families at the heart of what they are doing and be creative and innovative and embrace new ways of working. I acknowledge this and recognise it in respect of speech and language therapists, public health nurses and teachers who have been quite challenged in trying to figure out their role in responding to various issues. They have engaged with the kinds of support and resources that have been made available in Ballymun. The key is to put children and families at the centre of it.

Deputy Robert Troy referred to the return on investment study. We have a copy of it and if he wants any further specific information I can get back to him.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I had to leave the meeting for a while, but I heard the presentation from Ms McClorey. Believe it or not, I heard Mr. Candon upstairs in the office. The enthusiasm came across on the television upstairs, even if it was not felt here.

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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That is very cutting.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I am tweeting everyone.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms McClorey for her intensive report. It was music to my ears when I heard Mr. Noel Kelly speak. Although I would not call myself deprived, there was an element of poor people where I grew up beside Keogh Square in Inchicore. Keogh Square was the main housing block for the city council. I spent many a day running in and out of it with friends and living and working there voluntarily.

There is too much duplication of many services. It is very confusing for people. Much money has been poured into services that have not lived up to the required standards. That is where we have failed parents. I do not believe we should put everything on to teachers so that they must ensure children turn up for school dressed and with a breakfast. We need to focus again on the parents, family, surroundings and family networks. My main concern is that we should not take parenting away from parents. A teacher can only do so much when a child enters a classroom in the morning and goes home. A youth club can only do so much. The gap in the evening or early morning is where we have failed.

Given the area I come from and having worked locally with young children for a long time, I know that when children walked into the youth club, one could automatically see how their life would go - whether they would live longer than 18, for example. I am mainly concerned about the fact that schools I know cannot get a parent to sit in on a parenting class or sit on a board of management or even the parents' council. I am not blaming the teachers or the school. People criticised the Minister for Social Protection for taking away the dual payment. It has provided a focus for people who want to do something with their lives and not rely on a double payment anymore. That is evident where I live. I can see young people's attitudes changing completely. They do not have the security of that double payment so they are looking outward.

We need to look at what services are being duplicated. Should we have this amount of services? Should we concentrate on the services that are working as they should? Some of them are not found in the large agencies but are very small and involve working one-to-one with communities. I have a question about the Childhood Development Initiative, CDI, programme. What role do flesh-and-blood parents have in the early years programme? I enjoyed listening to everybody and think Mr. Kelly is a breath of fresh air.

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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Does Senator Burke wish to comment?

Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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My apologies for not being here this morning. Unfortunately, I had a matter to raise on the Order of Business in the Seanad. I congratulate the witnesses for the work they are doing. I have heard much about the project which I must visit because it is the only way to see the work on the ground. I am in a constituency where the problem is not on the same scale as Ballymun. There has been very little progress in the past 20 years because I am not sure about the structures that are there. This is why I have a reason to look at the project and see how it is working.

There has been a lack of joined-up thinking between the local authority, the health service and all other agencies. How did the witnesses approach that? They already may have given an explanation of that. I find a lack of joined-up thinking in my area. Everyone had their own agenda and targets but they are not co-ordinated and as a result, there is a significant lack of progress in real terms. Some medical consultants at UCC provided paediatric consultations on their own initiative within the community. This avoided people having to travel to the hospital and has brought about significant benefits locally. The aim now is to put it on a proper footing. It shows how a small initiative like that can have a significant influence. That is where joined-up thinking between all the institutions is lacking. How did the witnesses deal with that issue because we have made progress by getting people to work together.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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The reason I cited the West Dunbartonshire model was not necessarily the outcomes it had or the methodology it used but the ambition it had and terminology it used about eradicating child illiteracy. Mr. Candon mentioned Finland. We went on a trip to research Finnish education. A Conservative MP who is chair of the education committee there lectured us about the centrality of equality in Finland's education system. Both the Finnish approach and the West Dunbartonshire project are very value-driven. I agree that one cannot plant a model from somewhere else in the Irish situation but there is a poverty of ambition in our system about what we are trying to achieve. Could the witnesses comment on that and the validity of a localised solution?

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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Deputy Catherine Byrne had a very specific question for Ms Quinn. Would she like to answer that?

Ms Marian Quinn:

Parents are central to all the work we do. We have seven services, all of which have an element focusing on parents. In respect of our early years service, it was a valuation through a randomised control trial. We had 18 services, of which eight or nine delivered business as usual. The remainder were the intervention which received wraparound support and additional services. We do a number of specific things for parents. Each of those services had a parent carer facilitator who is very like a home-school liaison officer. It is someone working in the service whose job is specifically working with parents. That is one of the pieces of our early years service that has proved to be very effective and we are glad we have been able to continue that. That piece is continuing now. As part of our mainstream integration, they are being overseen by the county child care committee.

What the parent carer facilitator does is build capacity with parents and help them to engage not just with the service but with their child's development and learning. Like the other two sites, we were involved with Síolta. We have all been doing the quality framework for early years provision. Deputy Catherine Byrne spoke about schools not being able to get parents onto boards of management. Of course, that would be our experience in Tallaght west. As part of our Síolta work, parent carer facilitators worked with parents and our Síolta co-ordinator worked with the staff in the early years service to find a way for the governance of the service to become more real and accessible to people - something people wanted to get involved in. We increased the number of parents involved in boards of management of our early years services.

We have an early intervention speech and language therapy service. It is what we have all been talking about. The speech and language therapist visits the preschool and primary school, akin to what Senator Burke referred to in Cork. Attendance has been 100% as opposed to 50% for HSE assessments. Our model is three-pronged. The therapist works with the child and with either the early years practitioner or teacher to develop their capacity. Accredited training is delivered to them so they are able to reiterate the messages and ways of working of the speech and language therapist. Importantly, they work with parents so there is a formal parental education element in our speech and language therapy. It involves really simple tips for parents such as things one can do to help one's child recognise letters when one is going to the supermarket. It is all about increasing capacity, confidence and awareness of what I as a parent can do to help my child's learning in my everyday life.

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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Ms McClorey will speak, followed by Mr. Kelly.

Ms Eleanor McClorey:

Before responding to Senator Colm Burke, I will make a number of observations on the points made by Deputy Catherine Byrne, specifically the powerful and vital point she made that we should not load everything on to schools. Ms Quinn put the matter well when she described the parent as the primary resource and central element of the area based strategy to tackle child poverty. No one is more committed to children's rights and no one is a greater advocate and defender and protector of children's rights than an empowered and resourced parent. We engage with parents across the community, from pregnancy and birth onwards, to provide a coherent, integrated set of services that are specifically designed to increase their capacity to be a powerful advocate and driver of outcomes for their children. That point was very well made.

While I focused on literacy and methodologies in the classroom, I should emphasise that primary schools in Ballymun have broken new ground by sharing their literacy data with us. All of them have given us permission to analyse this data on a whole community basis. We also engage with individual schools, confidentially with principals, on what the data is telling us about how we need to work more closely with the schools in our literacy strategy. There is, however, a parallel family and community literacy strategy that is activated across the life cycle of the child. As such, it is not the case that everything is placed on the shoulders of our teachers who work so hard already. While they have embraced this change strategy, this does not mean parents are having this role removed from them.

On the quality, duplication and integration of services, I will focus on the youth sector. I note from the Chairman's opening comments that we should not refer to organisations by name and I will not do so. The most recent round of cutbacks targeting the youth and community sector were applied across the board. We have a dynamic youth sector in Ballymun which spearheaded the change strategy with youngballymun. Key leaders from the youth sector in Ballymun development group invested a couple of years of work in designing the prototype which we, youngballymun, further refined and implemented. They spearheaded accessible youth mental health services, evidence based youth practice and new ways of documenting and coding the work they were doing. None of this was taken into account when the cuts were applied a few months ago and no recognition was given to best practice, evidence or innovation. Instead, cuts were applied across the board and the service in Ballymun was cut by the same amount as all other services. As Deputy Catherine Byrne noted, there are services which do not embrace this kind of innovation and resist accountability. The lack of incentive for best practice must be tackled urgently in the funding allocations to the youth sector, particularly in respect of communities where agencies have had an opportunity to engage with evidence. Those communities which did this are being treated as if they had not done so. There is something terribly unfair about this failure at policy level to stimulate a best practice culture.

Senator Colm Burke raised the issue of joined-up thinking. Based on our experience of learning in youngballymun, joined up thinking must start with a blank sheet or large empty space on which one then notes a few critical or key points. We had evidence based area need and my colleagues have discussed some of the key criteria that underpin our strategy. Outside of that, our local service providers and community designed the work that is done by youngballymun. Those elements of the prototype design, if one likes, that they were not confident could be implemented were set aside and the providers developed a revised vision for the strategy. If one has speech and language therapists, public health nurses, teachers and community leaders sitting around a table designing a service, the likelihood that they will embed changes in their practice is much greater than if a committee from outside the area were to tell them what they must do. In some respects, it much more difficult to embed change when one is not part of it as one does not fully understand it in such circumstances. However, one also has resistance to imposition and control. While policy, funding mechanisms, standards and so forth must be centralised, we also require a bottom-up element. We had this across the three strategies. There was a prototype, a top-down with our funders and ourselves and then a bottom-up approach which was taken at the level of each local community.

The issue is not solely the programmes - the evidence and what one does - but the process in which one engages to enable joined up thinking. At this stage of the work - members have heard my colleagues from Tallaght and Darndale make the same point - it is also about incentivising the change process through funding lines. Funding must be continued where there is an opportunity to deliver and design change and if an agency is not willing to avail of this opportunity, accountability must come into play, particularly to the local community. I am delighted to extend an invitation to members to visit us.

Mr. Noel Kelly:

A great deal of work is under way on reforming local government. Unfortunately, however, another set of boundaries is about to be developed for the new child and family support agency. A decision must be taken at national level to establish one set of boundaries and require everyone to work to it. This is a real challenge when one is engaging with agencies. For example, we are in a particular area of Dublin City Council but the health board area with which we work only encroaches into a little corner of the council area as most of its work is in the Fingal County Council area. This is presenting a challenge in conversations we are having with key officials in the Health Service Executive as they tell us they cannot focus specifically on our area because they have a responsibility to the wider area. We must find a way to devise coherent boundaries. The country is not so large as to require 20 different sets of boundaries. The boundaries of the child and family support agency, which is one of the great hopes for the future, need to be realigned with other boundaries as otherwise we will have a further layer of confusion.

I thank Deputy Catherine Byrne for her positive comments. I failed to mention that parents who want to create change in their family often meet the greatest resistance within their family unit. The issue is not necessarily an external one and resistance is not always from agencies or schools but often from within the family. The change process taking place in families is as difficult or probably more difficult than the change process across services. We must empower and equip parents to step to one side and decide to do things differently, which means taking a different route from that taken by everybody else. We must appreciate that this is extremely difficult for members of families which have experienced three or four generations of unemployment, addiction and so forth. I am delighted that the first parent in our programme who got her child to school immediately joined our board of management. Perhaps there is something good in that.

Mr. Candon referred to the Write to Read literacy project, which has been running in one of the schools in our area. This is an Irish produced literacy programme, similar to that to which Ms McClorey referred. It is great it is being extended to a number of other schools. As Ms McClorey and Mr. Candon pointed it, the purpose here is to provide continuing professional development for teachers as opposed to giving people a two day course and telling them the issue is sorted. We will change professional practice by continually monitoring, checking, supporting and upgrading as well as addressing difficulties. There is an appetite for this in schools and other settings provided the right supports are made available.

Members will probably not be familiar with implementation science because it is a new concept in Ireland. Experts in the United States make the point that training achieves 5% of the impact whereas coaching and mentoring achieve 95% of impact. We have never done the coaching and mentoring piece. Instead, we delivered training and told people to go and apply it. We must reduce training and refocus on supporting people to implement the practice.

Mr. Mark Candon:

At different times, Deputy Ó Riordáin and I chaired the after school education support project in the North Wall. The group, which consists only of local women rather than professionals, started out as a drug prevention project. It is a fascinating and practical example of the empowerment to which other speakers referred.

They provide after school crèche and after school services for children aged three to 18. Some of our teachers would have helped out with women who were going for FETAC level 4, level, 5, level 6 and level 7 courses. All our mothers, particularly anybody over the age of 30 or 35, would have left to go into sewing factories at 14 years of age. Three of those girls have gone to the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and have completed social science degrees. I have said previously that the United States makes films about stuff like this. I feel a deep sense of frustration. That is one group. I talk about SWAN. We have the national college support group where the parents do a wonderful job. There are all these bits. My frustration concerns tying all the bits together to get continuity. I want to keep stressing the importance of that. There is a funding issue here. I do not know what will happen after Atlantic Philanthropies goes. I love my history and old wine in new bottles.

In the past there was the Bernard van Leer Foundation. There was also a small project whereby every time something was done in the education area in Ireland, it was trotted out and put near the top paragraph of the new report, called the Rutland Street project. Holland's book on the issue is fantastic from a qualitative understanding. The Educational Research Centre, ERC, produced two reports on it which are very interesting. In 1976, it was decided that because of cutbacks we could not afford to continue this work. The work that had been done was left in abeyance. I remind members, and those people who are old enough to remember the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in working class communities and in the inner city, of the invisibility, how things fell apart and how it has been presented to us through the work of Roddy Doyle in The Commitments and so on. Times got very tough then. I have a serious concern that not today or tomorrow, but ten years down the road some of what is happening now in terms of cutbacks where the soft underbelly is being taken away will be paid for in 2020. What happened from 1975 to 1985 was paid for in 1995 and right up to a few years ago.

The idea of an area base is really interesting. I cannot understand why the north inner city as a group is not involved; it is an area that should be involved. I stress that leadership issue. I need to be accountable to somebody. We have worked extremely hard on trust, respect and openness. We have ten years' work behind us with girls who are having babies at 18 and 19 years of age. They have worked with us all the way through. What we need is somebody to turn on the engine for us to make it happen. I think my colleagues understand the frustration. If we look at the group I mentioned, the after schools education support programme - Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin will verify - it is fascinating what can happen.

I took over a small boys school 13 years ago. To give an idea of some of the challenges out there and looking at the cohort who attend, I discovered that from 2000 to 2010 almost 90% of the mothers of the children who attended had not completed a State examination; they never got beyond primary school. That is a hidden Ireland and those are the challenges. The bottom up work has been done and it needs to be supported by the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste's office. It is a dialogue issue. It is not about telling the committee I cannot get in there and do what has to be done, but it has to be drawn together.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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Ms Marian Quinn spoke about speech and language. I note she said that the Childhood Development Initiative has a take up of 100% while the HSE has a take up of only 50%. Is that correct?

Ms Marian Quinn:

At assessment the HSE has 50%.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Quinn.

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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We will finish on that note. I thank-----

Ms Eleanor McClorey:

It is pertinent to this committee that the primary care strategy is back on the agenda and I think there is an allocation of 400 posts. This is linking some of the responsibilities of the committee with prevention and early intervention. The committee has heard how important primary care is across the work. Ensuring that the primary care strategy is implemented, resourced and staffed would be an enormous benefit.

Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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We have a follow-up meeting next week when I hope to get a cross-departmental attendance in order that the issue is not just put at the door of the Departments of Education and Skills, Social Protection or Children and Youth Affairs but at local authorities and the Department of Justice and Equality to start the proverbial banging of heads together. Children's services committees offer a significant opportunity and a platform to deliver the kind of change that is badly needed and to ensure that people understand that we all have a responsibility. It is not just an onus on a parent or child because children do not just live in families, they live in communities. That has come to the fore from the dialogue today. I thank the representatives for their time. I am sure we will be in contact again before the completion of the report.