Ivor Callely (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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Question 170: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the funding available to groups or organisations that provide counselling services; the mechanism in place to monitor the quality of services provided and the standards required to be in place; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8091/07]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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The Family Support Agency administers the scheme of grants for voluntary organisations providing marriage, child and bereavement counselling services. This is a non-statutory scheme of once-off grants to voluntary organisations providing a range of family counselling services aimed at enhancing stability in family life, and assisting families and their members to deal with difficult periods which they may experience.

In 2006, over €9 million was provided by the Government to the Family Support Agency for the scheme and a total of 541 organisations countrywide received funding. In Budget 2007 I increased the funds available to the Family Support Agency for the scheme of grants to over €10 million. The availability of this funding was advertised in January and over 500 applications have been received and are currently being processed.

In processing applications indicators of quality of service include:

professional indemnity insurance in place

counsellors appropriately supervised

affiliation to a national accreditation standard setting body i.e. Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy or Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy.

the evaluation of its services undertaken by an organisation

In addition, the Family Support Agency visit 10% of the organisations funded each year to evaluate the service being provided.

In January of this year I launched the review of the marriage, child and bereavement counselling scheme of grants, commissioned by the Agency and conducted by independent consultants Petrus Ltd. This review assessed the effectiveness of the scheme in terms of providing accessible and high quality counselling services to those who, without the support provided by the grants scheme, could not otherwise afford it or who would not otherwise access it, assessed the scheme in terms of value for money and made recommendations for measures which would facilitate the ongoing monitoring of the effectiveness of the scheme. The review provides overwhelming proof of the success of the counselling grants scheme. A sub group of the board of the Agency are currently examining the report with a view to further developing the scheme in line with the recommendations.