Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

The Chatterbox service, which facilitates early intervention in the area of speech therapy, is a successful collaborative social inclusion project between the Health Service Executive and the Cavan and Monaghan child care committees. The service was first introduced in 2004 and is funded under the health inequalities fund. It is proving to be an excellent early intervention tool, with a true partnership approach between the agencies involved. On a recent visit to the service I was pleased to see how effective it is. I said at the time to Deputy Ó Caoláin that it was a model that should be followed elsewhere. The issue links into the previous question on providing integrated services to young children in need of them.

Social inclusion services improve access to mainstream services, target services to needy groups, address inequalities and enhance the participation and involvement of socially excluded groups. The service is a primary health care project and is funded by the HSE. While I am very supportive of the initiative, responsibility for and funding of primary care services lies with my colleague, the Minister for Health. I continue to fund the child care committees. The committee in this instance has done an excellent job in terms of its role in supporting the implementation of the three national child care schemes and child care services generally, and has been involved in some of the initiatives.

In addition to the Chatterbox service in Cavan and Monaghan, pilot initiatives have been undertaken in other parts of the country to provide speech and language supports within child care settings. For example, the early years programme delivered by the Childhood Development Initiative in west Tallaght incorporates a speech and language service. This service offers support to children and training and support to parents and preschool staff. This speech and language service is being independently evaluated and the results will be available later this year. The development of the early years strategy will provide an opportunity to examine how we provide services and supports to children from birth to six years old. In that context we will have an opportunity to examine the type of service to which the question refers. We should examine initiatives such as these and they should inform national policy. They should also inform priorities for supporting children's development.

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