Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for raising this issue. The report is an important and impressive evaluation of the Bringing It All Back Home project. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh said, it was a project of the canal communities family welfare initiative. This is an inter-agency consortium. I fully agree with what Deputy Ó Snodaigh said in respect of the inter-agency arrangement. It is important that community, voluntary and statutory organisations work together since all are concerned with children's welfare and children's services delivery in the Inchicore and Bluebell areas.

In 2011 the programme identified a gap for children aged zero to four years. Those involved identified a cohort of children and families who were not engaging with services. Since they began their work, they have engaged with families and parents. There are many testimonies from parents in the report summarising the work. Those involved were successful through the national early years access initiative, NEYAI, and Pobal in delivering what was at the time a three year community, parent and family support and education programme. It was run by the Daughters of Charity Child and Family Service, which took on the lead role for the agency. The NEYAI is a partnership involving Atlantic Philanthropies. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh is aware, Atlantic Philanthropies is withdrawing from Ireland in the coming year or two. It also involves the Mount Street Club Trust, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, the early years education policy unit of the Department of Education and Skills and Pobal, which provided a governance and management role.

Let us put this in context. The national early years access initiative is an important initiative. It comprises 11 local projects from five counties, of which Bringing It All Back Home is one. They work in collaboration with a range of partners. Each has a particular focus, such as training and professional development; integrated family services management and practice; and language, literacy and numeracy. There are five areas of activity. They work to ensure standards in child care, to upskill the early childhood care and education workforce, to help children to be ready for school and to develop parent skills and parenting support. The work involves trying to get the a continuum of services out to families as well as working on the well-being of parents and their capacity to nurture their children's development.

They have operated in a climate of rapid change in terms of policy and infrastructure for the development of these services with funding cuts and new funding initiatives resulting in alterations to some of the planned activities. All 11 projects are in the final phase of implementation and all are exploring the question of sustainability, which is a difficult question. They were pilot projects and therefore the question of sustainability and related costs must be examined. They are going through this process and an entire community is working on it. The initiative will finish this year but the projects have different end dates, with two finishing in April, four in July and five in August. Bringing It All Back Home is one of the projects and that contract ends in August.

I emphasise that the projects were started with a clear understanding that they were part of an initiative to test, trial and research ways of working with a vision to be able to streamline good evidence-based practice in early intervention. Funding was agreed for a three-year contract. My understanding is that no further funding is available for the initiative from the source of the original funding - I am referring in particular to Atlantic Philanthropies and the Mount Street Trust - since the arrangement was time bound. There will, however, be a national conference in May at which the findings from the initiative will be discussed and the lessons learned will be examined. Local children's services committees have been involved and there could be discussions with them on proposals for continuing the work of the project beyond the current contract.

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