Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

201. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the degree to which her Department continues to offer support to parents who may find themselves in a challenging situation due to financial or health issues; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38244/18]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My Department operates a number of initiatives to support parents who may find themselves in a challenging situations due to financial or health issues.

The Area Based Childhood (ABC) Programme, which is a prevention and early intervention initiative, targets investment in effective services to improve the outcomes for children and families living in areas of disadvantage. The programme is delivered in 13 areas of disadvantage in Ireland, each led by local consortia who co-ordinate the planning and delivery of a wide range of services and supports in their local area. Each of the ABC sites deliver a range of universal and targeted interventions designed to support parents and improve outcomes for children, from home visiting programmes to community based supports.

In June 2018, several proposals supporting parenting projects were also awarded once off funding under the Quality and Capacity Building Initiative (QCBI) Innovation Fund. The aim of this funding measure is to support organisations testing out new approaches or programmes in communities around the country, in order to address unmet needs of families with children and young people and their families facing disadvantage.

My Department, as part of its commitment to highlighting the critical importance of parenting in children’s lives and influencing social, emotional and physical outcomes, hosted an Open Policy Debate (OPD) on the theme of Parenting Supports in Ireland in May 2018. The OPD gathered stakeholders including policymakers, providers, practitioners and national and international experts from across this sector. The findings from this event are informing the Department’s approach to developing the theme of parenting.

My Department operates a number of targeted programmes to support families. CCS (Community Childcare Subvention) is a childcare programme targeted at parents on low income so that they can avail of reduced childcare costs at participating community childcare services.

The CCSP (Plus) programme supports parents on low income to avail of reduced childcare costs at participating privately owned childcare services and at community not-for-profit childcare services. CCSRT (Transitional) is a CCS programme which provides access to free childcare for children of families experiencing homelessness and is designed to help those transitioning from homelessness to permanent accommodation. CCSR (Resettlement) is a programme which provides access to free childcare to children of parents who are programme refugees, in order to help support their resettlement and integration into Irish Society.

The TEC (Training and Employment Childcare) programme is an overarching childcare programme specifically designed to support parents on eligible training courses as well as certain categories of parents returning to work, by providing subsidised childcare places. Notwithstanding the above, all children meeting the minimum age requirement of 2 years and 8 months are eligible for a full two programme years on the Early Childhood Care and Education programme (ECCE).

My Department also introduced the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) as a way of providing a programme of supports to enable children with a disability to access and meaningfully participate in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. The key objective of AIM is to support pre-school providers to deliver an inclusive pre-school experience, ensuring that children with a disability can fully participate in the ECCE programme, thereby reaping the benefits of quality pre-school education.

My Department also introduced a universal (non-means tested) subsidy, Community Childcare Subvention Universal (CCSU), for all children in Tusla-registered childcare aged between 6 months until they are eligible for the ECCE programme, which amounts to up to €1,040 per year for children in full-time childcare.

Finally, Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, has a key role in supporting and promoting child protection and welfare, and the effective functioning of families. Family support services provided by Tusla, include, but are not limited to, counselling services to vulnerable children and families in local community settings, and universal services through Family Resource Centres nationwide. Tusla also provides services for the care and protection of victims of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence.