Ms Mary Higgins:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the invitation to attend to review with them our financial statements for 2014 and 2015 and giving me the opportunity to make a short opening statement. By way of context, I will give a brief overview of Caranua, its aims and application process. Caranua was established, as the Chairman said, under 2012 legislation to manage a fund of €110 million to support the needs of survivors of institutional abuse, people who had been placed in the care of State as children and experienced neglect and abuse in these institutions which had been managed by religious congregations on behalf of the State. The damaging effects of this experience are lifelong and while most survivors have led fulfilling lives, the lives of many others have been limited in multiple ways because of what they endured as children.

In setting out to design a service for survivors we aimed to base it on their expressed needs and preferences and what was known about the effects of adverse childhood experiences and how they could be addressed. This approach was helped by our having four survivors on the board. We also consulted about 200 individuals in Ireland and England during 2013. It was clear that the majority of survivors were ageing and that very many of them were disadvantaged educationally and in other ways and would find it difficult to engage with a service that was in any way bureaucratic or rigid. It was with these survivors in mind that we designed our application process on the principle that if it worked for the most vulnerable, it would work for everyone. Our central aim was, and is, to put survivors at the heart of everything we did. Our application process is values-based, needs-led and person-centred.

It is broken into different stages. When an applicant is ready to apply for services, he or she is appointed a dedicated adviser to provide support, advice and information in making an application to Caranua and, as necessary, make referrals to and-or advocate with other organisations for other services. We try to ensure there are no barriers for someone in applying to us and we pay particular attention to ensuring our application and other information materials are accessible. All are in plain English. We have easy-to-read versions and short films on our website. We organise a number of outreach events every year at which applicants and potential applicants can come to meet advisers and other staff face to face. We hold a monthly clinic with interpreting services in Dublin.