Written answers
Thursday, 18 May 2017
Department of Children and Youth Affairs
Area Based Childhood Programme
Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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307. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the amount of funding that has been provided to the ABC schemes on an annual basis since 2011. [23616/17]
Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The ABC Programme is a joint prevention and early intervention initiative, led by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) in conjunction with The Atlantic Philanthropies (Atlantic). The ABC Programme commenced in 2013 and was designed as a time-bound, co-funding agreement in the amount of €29.7m to 2017. In late 2016, my Department secured additional funding to ensure that all 13 existing ABC sites are to remain in contract to the end of December 2017. Addendums to contracts are currently being issued to sites to facilitate these extensions.
The aim of the ABC Programme is to test and evaluate prevention and early intervention approaches to improve outcomes for children and families in 13 areas of disadvantage. The focus of the work under the ABC Programme covers, in the main: Child Health & Development; Children’s Learning; Parenting; and Integrated Service Delivery.
Below are the funding amounts received by each ABC site from 2013 to 2016 inclusive, alongside the total allocations for the period 2013 to 2017 under the ABC Programme.
| Total Allocation 2013-2017 (ABC) | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| €m | €m | €m | €m | €m | |
| Ballyfermot - Family Matters | 0.75 | - | - | 0.19 | 0.41 |
| Ballymun - YoungBallymun | 5.5 | 0.50 | 1.75 | 1.75 | 1.20 |
| Young Knocknaheeny | 1.8 | - | - | 0.45 | 0.63 |
| Bray SPECS | 0.84 | - | - | 0.21 | 0.29 |
| Clondalkin Blueskies Initiative | 1.13 | - | 0.27 | 0.38 | 0.25 |
| Dublin Docklands NCI | 1.2 | - | 0.12 | 0.18 | 0.66 |
| Northside PFL (Incl. Midlands) | 3.74 | 0.30 | 1.20 | 0.50 | 0.77 |
| Better Finglas | 1.21 | - | - | 0.55 | 0.42 |
| Louth - The Genesis Programme | 1.51 | - | 0.15 | 0.76 | 0.45 |
| Limerick ABC Start "Right" | 1.58 | - | - | 0.39 | 0.55 |
| CDI Tallaght | 4.63 | 0.41 | 1.42 | 1.42 | 0.41 |
| DIT Grangegorman ABC | 0.94 | - | - | 0.24 | 0.33 |
| 24.83 | 1.21 | 4.91 | 7.02 | 6.37 |
The ABC Programme was preceded by the Prevention and Early Intervention Programme (PEIP) (2007-2013) in which three sites participated: Youngballymun, CDI Tallaght, and the Preparing for Life Programme. Total funding for the PEIP amounted to €36 million.
It is the intention of my Department to seek additional funding in this year’s estimates process, to extend the ABC Programme to the end of August 2018. This extension brings the existing programme closer in line with the expected timeline for delivery of the national evaluation report in 2018.
My Department is working to ensure that we take full account of the learning from all the interventions across the 13 ABC sites, and the national evaluation. We will utilise this learning to inform the delivery of prevention and early intervention initiatives in order to achieve our goal of improving the lives of children and families throughout Ireland.
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