Ms Fiona Kearney:

We are grateful for the invitation and the opportunity to contribute to the discussion on the direction of children's and young people's services. We are here today to tell the committee about the experiences of young people and families we work with in the community of Ballyfermot and Cherry Orchard and to suggest some solutions. It is important to say that we are not here to represent the youth work sector as we have not consulted with other services or youth workers, and we are not solely a youth service.

I will start by telling the committee a bit about FamiliBase. FamiliBase has three strands within its service delivery: early years; child and family; and youth and community. We offer a continuum of programmes and services within these strands. Programme delivery in FamiliBase occurs at a range of different levels, from universal level, for example drop-ins, youth cafés, arts events and early childhood care and education, ECCE, to intensive wraparound practice for those with multiple or complex needs, for example intensive family support, systemic family therapy, case management and therapeutic key working. Given the national policy landscape on integrating services for children, young people and families, FamiliBase has worked to integrate programmes and service delivery to develop an easily accessible one-stop shop of services to support the children, young people and families in the Ballyfermot and Cherry Orchard community.

Post the Covid pandemic, it is our view that children and young people from our community have been disproportionately impacted from an education, mental health and welfare point of view. This is compounded by significant challenges in statutory services for children and young people, for example child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, primary care psychology etc., as well as the housing challenges and cost-of-living crisis we hear about. These issues have landed on top of a community already experiencing significant structural inequality and are impacting severely on young people and their families. Youth services are often the first port of call for families and young people when they are experiencing these challenges. We are ideally placed in the heart of communities to respond and support young people. However, we need the other services to work effectively if we are to properly support young people.

We would like to acknowledge all of the Departments that fund our one-stop shop of services as we believe this is a very effective and efficient way to provide services. Today we have two requests that will provide a significant improvement to the lives of children, young people and families in our community. The Government needs to increase resourcing to youth services which recognise, as we do, that some young people with complex needs require an intensive case-management approach. This work should not take away from the targeted group work we are funded to deliver but be in addition to our service provision. The Government should consider models of community mental health support for young people in the context of the significant problems being experienced in CAMHS and primary care psychology. There needs to be a recognition that young people would find it easier and more accessible to receive mental health support in an environment where they are comfortable. Youth services are ideally placed to offer therapeutic services to young people and their families in addition to their youth work provision, if effectively resourced.

The model we use in FamiliBase, is systemic family therapy.

We are looking to develop this to a trauma therapy centre while recognising that a whole family approach is necessary if we are to get real results and deal with intergenerational trauma. We cannot meet the demand for this service currently, due to the level of resourcing we have, but we have identified significant outcomes when we do use this service with families.