Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I hear the Deputy. This base level funding will go towards aligning the completion of programme activities for all 13 ABC grant recipients to August 2017. In the meantime, the funders and the three local sites are exploring further funding arrangements to ensure continued service provision. It will also ensure that Young Ballymun can inform the national evaluation of the ABC programme, which is extremely critical, prioritise those aspects of its service delivery that demonstrate compelling evidence of significant positive impact, and progress the transition of these programmes and services into the mainstream locally. Young Ballymun has welcomed this additional funding and has indicated that it will submit a board-approved proposal outlining a prioritised programme provision in the coming weeks.

A broad range of interventions have been tried out across all 13 ABC sites. Rather than rolling out a model for any one particular ABC site across the State, a strategic approach will be taken whereby interventions supported by the best evidence of impact will be identified and the lessons from these disseminated. Several evaluations are continuing which will inform this approach. First there is a national evaluation of all the sites participating in the ABC programme, conducted by the Centre for Effective Services. Second, alongside that national evaluation, many sites are conducting local evaluations of their work. Very promising evaluations are already available from other sites in the original PEIP. In the case of Young Ballymun, as part of the funding arrangement under the ABC programme, the funders requested that it develop further its evidence base supporting its range of interventions. In response, Young Ballymun commissioned a performance story report in 2015 to assemble an evidence base to support its work, produced a draft report and assembled a jury of international experts to review it. They concluded that there was evidence of change in a range of outcome areas in Ballymun and acknowledged the contributions of the programme and other initiatives to these changes. It also concluded that some areas of evidence required strengthening before firmer conclusions could be drawn. I want to ensure that the lessons from effective interventions under the ABC programme are harnessed and brought into the mainstream of existing services nationally. Officials in the Department are working to ensure coherent and strategic next steps for prevention and early intervention in Ireland, and this work will be given added impetus given the range of programme for Government commitments. I hope to have that well advanced in the coming months and to have a clearer view of the next steps. We are considering lots of different issues in that regard and will examine evaluation results and the recommendations of the group to help bring the lessons into the mainstream. In the meantime, the officials continue to liaise with Young Ballymun to ensure priority services can be secured until mid-2017.

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