Ms Heather O'Shea:

The project worker role is 30 hours at the moment, four days a week. We are recruiting for the practical part-time family support worker, which is a two-day post. When we set up the service, we focused on women in prison. That is where the bulk of our work has been to date. We have started stretching back to pre-sentencing and building relationships in the community. We focused on areas with a high population of Traveller families in Dublin north. I have met probation services, local community services and schools to build up the referral process there. We are limited in what we can do because the bulk of our work is in prisons at the moment.

The pre-sentencing piece is slower because all of our resources are going into prisons. The hope is that the pre-sentencing piece will be for women attending court and if the next step is prison, that we can provide intensive family support not only to the mother but the children outside. Huge changes will take place, particularly regarding who will care for the children. If the children go into the care of a grandmother or the care system, it is consistency and a familiar face. That is the main piece, for me, for the child and mam to know I meet her on Tuesday but on Wednesday I will see her children out in the community. It is to have consistency between the two. It is also about advocating for these women and the children in regard to care such as care decisions and who will care for the children. If they will go into maternal or paternal care, it is to provide that support too. Perhaps granny has not cared for a younger child in 20 years and now she is caring for a six-year-old. It is about how we can support granny for that transition for the child to be cared for.