Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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250. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the extent to which rehabilitative support services continue to be made available for juvenile offenders. [15224/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Children Detention Schools, based in Oberstown, Lusk, Co. Dublin, continue to deliver services focused on education and rehabilitation of all young people detained in order to address offending behaviour and to support their early re-integration into the community. The development project recently completed in Oberstown includes a new purpose-built education, training and recreation unit. This will ensure sufficient age and ability appropriate facilities to support the delivery, by Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Education and Training Board, of the necessary education and training services to young people in detention.

The child care model of detention delivered in Oberstown provides for a range of rehabilitative supports for each child as part of an overall programme, with a strong ethos of school attendance, education and training and an emphasis on rehabilitation. An individual management plan is put in place for each child which includes an assessment to determine the need for more specialist intervention from the Assessment, Consultation and Therapy Service (ACTS). This is a national service that provides clinical services to children in detention and in special care, as well as short term interventions when the child returns to the community. There are also a number of other therapeutic and education programmes delivered on the Oberstown campus which are aimed at addressing offending behaviour patterns by children.

The Deputy will also be aware that earlier community based interventions to divert young people from offending behaviour, such as the Garda Youth Diversions Projects and the Garda Diversion Programme are also in place in the community and come under the responsibility of my colleague, the Minister for Justice and Equality. I also wish to note that my Department has recently awarded a contract for a Bail Supervision Scheme for young people. The scheme is due to commence later this year in the Dublin area, and is intended to provide an option for a court to remand a child on bail but subject to intensive therapeutic supports in the community.