Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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552. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the status of national interim reports on the ABC programme by the Centre of Effective Centres; and when she expects those reports to be available for each centre. [40742/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Area Based Childhood (ABC) Programme is a joint prevention and early intervention initiative led by my Department and The Atlantic Philanthropies. The ABC Programme commenced in 2013 and was co-funded for the period 2013 to 2017 in the amount of €29.7m. The programme is managed by the Centre for Effective Services and Pobal on behalf of the funders. The aim the programme is to test and evaluate prevention and early intervention approaches in areas of disadvantage in Ireland to improve outcomes for children, in particular children and families living in poverty. The focus of the work under the ABC Programme covers: Child Health & Development; Children’s Learning; Parenting; and Integrated Service Delivery.

There are 13 sites across Ireland participating in the ABC programme. Eight of these are based in Dublin: CDI Tallaght; Preparing for Life; Youngballymun; Clondalkin Behavioural Initiative; Better Finglas; Dublin Docklands and East Inner City; Grangegorman and Ballyfermot. The remaining five sites are located in Cork; Louth; Bray; Limerick and the Midlands.

Prior to the ABC Programme, the Prevention and Early Intervention Programme (PEIP) ran from 2007-2013 and it funded the following three organisations which transitioned into the ABC programme: Youngballymun, Childhood Development Initiative Tallaght, and the Preparing for Life Programme Darndale.

The Centre for Effective Services is responsible for designing and managing the evaluation of the ABC Programme. It is guided and advised in the planning and implementation of the evaluation by the Expert Advisory Group (EAG).

The three strands to the evaluation are:

1. Outcomes evaluation to assess the achievement of child and parent outcomes across the ABC Programme

2. Implementation evaluation to assess the achievement of implementation outcomes and explore the processes and drivers of implementation

3. Cost analysis evaluation for each Area and suite of services and associated activities

The Centre for Effective Services expects that draft outcome reports for each area will be issued for comment by the end of 2016. It also expects to finalise the interim area-specific outcome reports by the end of February 2017 and the national outcomes report by the end of March 2017.

The Government is fully committed to ensuring that learning from all sites funded under the ABC programme will inform other services and supports for children in the area of prevention and early intervention. Such an approach would offer a greater reach, in scope and depth, which will in turn enhance outcomes for children throughout the country. As there is effective work being done on a range of themes across all 13 ABC sites, a key focus over the next year will be to determine the high-impact programmes and provision across these areas so that a more strategic approach can be taken to mainstreaming such learning.