Prevention and Early Intervention Programme
A growing body of international research supports earlier intervention to secure better longer term outcomes for children. For children disadvantaged by background or family circumstance especially, positive supports provided in the very first years positively impact life chances by promoting child emotional and physical development. Further targeted intervention at key points during childhood and adolescence helps prevent onset of problem behaviours and underachievement and provides an alternative to late, expensive treatment and crisis intervention. Prevention and early intervention with children is likely to be most successful when nested within supports for families – to provide parents experiencing difficulties with the personal resources and skills they need, and to foster positive family environments in which children can develop and achieve.
One particular current innovative measure currently underway is the Prevention and Early Intervention Programme for Children which aims to prevent children from succumbing to the risks associated with disadvantage, as well as providing them with the resilience to overcome those risks by focusing on interventions which impact on the lives of children at critical points.
The Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs is managing and overseeing the Programme, which will run for an initial five-year period and which has a fund amounting to €36 million in total. €18 million of this is being provided by Government and €18 million is being provided by The Atlantic Philanthropies. Initially the focus is on a small number of projects in severely disadvantaged communities. The particular areas identified have a very strong level of community development where there is a real impetus to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. The three projects funded under the Programme are:
A place for Children in Tallaght West – Childhood Development Initiative. connect.southdublin.ie/cdi/index.php
Preparing for Life – Northside Communities of Belcamp, Darndate and Moatview. www.preparingforlife.ie/
Young Ballymun - www.youngballymun.org/
Some of the areas which the projects are focussing on include: improving literacy, improving mental and physical health, increasing children’s readiness for school, increasing pro-social behaviour, and providing early childhood care and education.
The intention is that the learning from these projects can be benchmarked and evaluated, thus providing an important input to policy and service development. Learning will be captured both in terms of what works – the services and interventions that lead to better outcomes for children – and why it works in terms of the processes that contribute to successful outcomes. The latter includes learning about how services are best designed, offered, organised, and integrated, and the effect of community input to their commissioning and ongoing review. If these projects prove successful, the results may provide the basis for enhanced resource allocation processes and policy changes which will improve the outcomes for every child in Ireland.
Additional Dormant Accounts' Funding for PEIP Project Sites
The Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs has invited applications for additional funding from the Dormant Accounts' Fund from the three project sites currently in receipt of funding under the Prevention and Early Intervention Programme (PEIP) in respect of the programme of work contracted under the PEIP.
Applications are limited to the sites currently in receipt of funding under the PEIP and the total funding available for disbursement represents the balance of the funding originally committed to by Government upon the launch of the Programme. This funding is matched by the Atlantic Philanthropies.
Details of successful applications will be published shortly
