Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The Department's facilitators work with social welfare recipients of working age to promote economic participation and enhance social inclusion. Recipients include people in receipt of jobseekers payments, people parenting alone, people in receipt of disability payments and people providing care. Facilitators work with these social welfare recipients to identify appropriate training or development programmes which will enhance the skills that the individual has and ultimately improve employment chances as well as help them to continue to develop personally. They develop individual progression plans with the customer.

Facilitators operate within the Department's regional structure and are located throughout the country covering defined geographical areas. They work closely with FÁS and other agencies at a local level to identify and target appropriate education, training and development programmes for social welfare recipients of working age. The facilitator service is available to social welfare customers at all local offices. Facilitators hold open clinics and meet with people who have been referred either by the social welfare local office, by other agencies or by local development groups.

Appointments to see a facilitator can be made by contacting the social welfare local office or the facilitator directly. In addition to this, cases are also selected centrally and referred to facilitators by the employment support section. The service was enhanced under the national development plan social and economic participation programme, which provided for the provision of 70 job facilitators. There are currently 67 facilitators serving which constitutes 65.4 full time equivalent posts.

In the current economic climate the demand for the facilitator service is elevated. Facilitators generally have scheduled days when they are available in different locations across our network of offices and people wishing to meet with a facilitator would be advised to call on one of those days, as a centralised appointment system is not maintained. Accordingly, waiting times for individual facilitators are not maintained, although facilitators make every effort to contact all interested customers as quickly as possible.

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