Results 1,221-1,240 of 7,359 for speaker:Katherine Zappone

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Data Protection (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: Data protection responsibility falls within the remit of the Support Services function at my Department. The Data Protection Officer also holds additional responsibilities and there are no plans to make this role an exclusive position at my Department.

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Early Childhood Care and Education (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: My Department does its best to ensure, in so far as is possible, the equitable treatment of all children and families who apply for childcare funding under the ECCE Programme. In order to ensure objectivity and fairness it is essential that clear rules exist for the scheme and that they are applied in a fair manner. The rules for all the Department’s childcare schemes are clearly...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Child Care Costs (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The DCYA currently administers four targeted childcare programmes to support low income families. These are: 1. Community Childcare Subvention Programme (CCS) 2. Childcare Education and Training Support Programme (CETS), 3. After-School Childcare Programme (ASC) 4. Community Employment Childcare Programme (CEC). These four programmes are administratively very complex and...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Residential Institutions (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: As previously advised, a centre manager has been identified for the residential centre in question. An exact date of appointment will be agreed when the timescale for capital and minor capital works is available. This information will allow for a timeline to be developed around the appointment of the manager and the reopening plan for the centre. The Social Work Management and...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Mother and Baby Homes Inquiries (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: I propose to take Questions Nos. 960 and 961 together. There have been numerous calls to extend the Commission's Terms of Reference. I am satisfied that the Commission has sufficient independence, powers and scope to examine a broad range of concerns and to make a determination on their relevance to the central issues in question. The Commission can also make recommendations in any of...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Mother and Baby Homes Inquiries (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes has recently submitted a second Interim Report. This Report has been prepared in response to my request that the Commission report on whether it considers any additional matters may warrant further investigation as part of the its work. This request was made of the Commission in July when the Government agreed an extension of...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Child and Family Agency Services (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: Tusla has advised that it has had no involvement with this initiative and has not received an application to register this application as a children's residential centre. Tusla will only place children in centres which have completed the registration process. It is Departmental and Tusla policy that children 12 years and younger requiring admission to care should be placed in foster care....

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Child and Family Agency Data (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: At the end of July 2016, there were a total of 25,069 open child welfare and protection cases nationwide. An open case is one which is assessed as needing a dedicated (allocated) social work service. Of the 25,069 open cases, 80% (20,019) had an allocated social worker and 5,050 were waiting to be allocated a social worker. This is a decrease of 1,668 (25%) in the number of unallocated...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Early Childhood Care and Education (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The cost of introducing free universal childcare is very hard to forecast as the measure would have a major impact on childcare usage. The scale of this impact is very hard to predict. The fact that the take-up of the ECCE scheme is 95% indicates that a very large proportion of families who do not currently use non-parental childcare might take up the offer of free childcare. In addition, the...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Child and Family Agency Funding (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: At the end of 2015, the Child and Family Agency, Tusla developed a three-year plan which identified the requirement for additional resources to meet critical service concerns including targeted funding to address the findings of a national review of child welfare and protection cases awaiting allocation to a social worker. The plan to address unallocated cases involves increasing staffing...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Early Childhood Care and Education (27 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The costs of the measures described are heavily dependent on uptake – it is estimated that, at present, 10% of children under three are in formal childcare. To cater for an expansion of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme would require significant capital investment to increase the capacity of the childcare sector. In addition, this is likely to require an enormous...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Early Childhood Care and Education (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The expansion of the ECCE programme will see the number of children benefitting from the Programme rise from around 67,000 to around 127,000 in a given programme year. For the 2016/17 programme year, it is estimated that 89,500 children will be eligible to enrol in the Programme from September 2016, an additional 22,000 from January 2017 and a further 15,500 from April 2017. The maximum...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Domestic Violence Policy (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: In 2016, funding for Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence services is €20.6 million. This includes additional funding of €200,000, requested by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency to implement the provisions of the Council of Europe Convention on Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention). As the agency with statutory responsibility for care and...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Special Educational Needs Service Provision (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: AIM, which is a new programme of supports to enable children with a disability to access and fully participate in the free pre-school programme, is administered by Pobal on behalf of this Department. The degree of support provided will depend on the needs of the child in the context of the pre-school service. The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme is provided for 3 hours...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Early Childhood Care and Education (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The rule whereby parents could not avail of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme and the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme at the same time was introduced to make sure that as many families as possible could benefit from finite resources. The rule enabled more parents to avail of some level of subsidisation at a time when the funding available for such schemes...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Community Childcare Subvention Programme (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The detailed information sought by the Deputy is not currently available in my Department in the format requested. However, I have requested Pobal, the agency that administers the CCS on my Department’s behalf, to provide the information for the Deputy in no later than 10 working days. I have asked my officials to follow up on this and to ensure delivery of the information to the...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Community Childcare Subvention Programme (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The detailed information sought by the Deputy is not currently available in my Department in the format requested. However, I have requested Pobal who administers the scheme on my Department’s behalf to provide the information which will be supplied to the Deputy no later than 10 working days. I have asked my officials follow up on this to ensure delivery as a matter of urgency.

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Child and Family Agency Staff (28 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: The Child and Family Agency (Tusla) has advised that at present, there are 3589.24 whole-time equivalent staff directly employed. As Tusla records its data by administrative area as opposed to on a county basis, a breakdown by county is not available. The breakdown by administrative area is set out in tabular format below. The Deputy should note that the classification 'Corporate' includes...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Preschool Services (29 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: As this is a service matter, I have asked the Child and Family Agency/Tusla to consider the Deputy’s request, to liaise with the Health Service Executive, if required and to respond directly to the Deputy with the information he requests in no later than 10 working days. I have asked my officials to follow up on this and to ensure delivery of the information to the Deputy as a matter...

Written Answers — Department of Children and Youth Affairs: Family Resource Centres (29 Sep 2016)

Katherine Zappone: I can confirm that I recently received a pre-budget submission for 2017, from the Family Resource Centre National Forum, seeking additional funding to support the Family Resource Centre Programme funded by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. There are currently 109 communities supported through the Family and Community Services Resource Centre Programme. Tusla provides core funding to...