Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 615: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the extent, if any, to which she has been in a position to identify the most important or needy areas for investment in terms of personnel or facilities in the child support services; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8391/12]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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My Department publishes a biennial State of the Nation's Children report which benchmarks progress on services and supports as well as children's outcomes. My Department has also recently published a National Research and Data Strategy which sets out a strategic direction and comprehensive action plan for research and data on children's lives in Ireland for the next five years. One of the five objectives is to improve monitoring and evaluation of children's services in Ireland at local and national level and the actions carried under this objective, particularly those relating to improving administrative systems, will be used to ensure good quality information is available to inform my Department about key areas for investment.

My Department also manages the National Children's Research Programme. As part of this Programme, more than sixty research studies on children's lives have been funded. Among these are studies of children at risk including children on remand, youth homelessness, children who are witnesses to domestic violence and children as carers. This month a set of briefing notes covering more than half of these studies was published, containing key messages for policy and practice arising from this research. The largest study under the National Children's Research Programme is Growing Up in Ireland, the National Longitudinal Study of Children. This Study is following the development of almost 20,000 children in Ireland across two cohorts: an infant cohort recruited at age nine-months; and a child cohort recruited at age nine years. Since 2006, when the first phase of the study commenced, two waves of data collection of the infant cohort have been completed (at age nine-months and three years) and two waves of data collection of the child cohort are also almost completed (at ages nine years and thirteen years).

These studies allow us to better understand children's lives, particularly the lives of children at risk. Growing Up in Ireland in particular, also allows us to better understand the risk and protective factors for these children and the importance of early experiences on outcomes later in life.

Further, the recently published National Strategy for Research and Data on Children's Lives, 2011-2016 contains commitments to improving our knowledge of children's lives and the supports and services needed across five themes based on the National Services Outcomes of the Agenda for Children's Services. Some examples include:

Child protection

§ Analysis of existing reports and literature on children in need of protection and in care of the State with extraction of key messages to be published by mid 2013.

Youth justice

§ Studies measuring the impact and outcomes of youth justice initiatives will be carried out over the period 2012-2015

Early Childhood Care and Education

§ Findings of process and intervention evaluations from the Prevention and Early Intervention Programme by mid 2014

Children's participation in decision-making

§ Two reports on the extent to which children's voices are heard in policy and service development will be published at the end of 2012, from a research project to examine young people's experiences of existing participation structures and from a review of literature on participation initiates and experiences with seldom-heard young people.

Youth affairs

§ Administrative data on youth work services will be used to profile activity, resources and services in this sector, starting in 2012.

Poverty and social inclusion

§ Performance indicators to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of child income support payments will be published by the Department of Social Protection commencing in 2012.