I work for an organisation called CROSSCARE, the Dublin diocesan social care agency, but I am before the committee to represent Breaking Through, of which I am vice-chairman. It is unusual for me to be here. Normally, our national development officer, Ms Eileen Burke, would be present but she is on maternity leave. As she is expecting a baby at any minute, I have been given the task of leading this discussion. I will run through a short history of Breaking Through, including what we have done previously and what we hope to do in the future.
Breaking Through was formed in 1999, deriving from a European conference on providing services to practitioners working with young people at risk throughout EU member states. In 1999, a group of practitioners, representing the island of Ireland — North and South — came together to examine how best to provide services for practitioners and to identify the relevant issues. Arising from this — although I was not a member at the time — it was agreed that the best way to provide support services to practitioners would be to form seven local regions that would, in turn, provide feedback for a national committee. The seven encompassed every part of the island of Ireland, with the main focus being to provide practitioners working with young people with a firm policy base and to enable them to network positively within their own regions — whether in Dublin and its surrounding areas, the north west, the north east or elsewhere. In that way, local networks could be formed within every region to assist these practitioners, whether they are from large organisations such as the Garda juvenile office and the Health Service Executive, or from smaller single or double-worker programmes involved in Youthreach centres and Traveller centres. The system is designed to work across the board in all areas where we hope to provide for all such people.
What makes Breaking Through unique is that it aims to provide its practitioners with the ability to view young people at risk holistically. We all do in-service training and examine policy issues within our own organisation, for example, in CROSSCARE or the HSE. Much of the time, that in-house training or developmental work is based on the policy of one's own agency. Breaking Through is striving to break away from that and examine the young people at risk in a holistic manner. Therefore, at the drop of a hat — for example, by using the telephone — we can have access to policy information and other practitioners within our regions who can provide a holistic approach to the problem of young people at risk. Instead of dealing only with the immediate, presentable problems, such as homelessness and drug abuse, we are enabling practitioners within Breaking Through's membership to provide a holistic service for young people at risk and their families.
The organisation is currently striving to involve its members, particularly single-project workers and small staff teams. The people concerned do not really have sufficient budgets for staff training or development, neither do they possess the capacity nor the energy to spend much time on staff training, development and networking. We hope to establish the correct regional structures to enable them to have a greater say in what is happening. By working with their fellow practitioners in Breaking Through, they will be able to empower the young people with whom they are working.
In many of these small, not well funded projects — I will not say underfunded — the level of funding does not allow them to spend large amounts of time networking. I will give members one small example. In recent years in Dublin, for instance, we have organised daytime seminars and training events around teenage suicide and providing services for young, unaccompanied minors. We have also looked at young people in care and at the drugs issue in Dublin. As I said, we continue to strive to involve as many of those small staff team projects in these events in order that they can gain access to people and projects with much more experience and resources and, to get back to the original point, we can then provide young people with a more holistic service.
As an organisation, we do not provide any direct services for young people. As I said, we support our members in providing better structures and support networks in order that they, in turn, can provide a better service for young people at risk. Our whole network is based on a model whereby we want to be visible and vocal in the area of preventive work. We are not looking to form a network which will be very active at the juvenile justice level or at the child-family welfare conferencing level. We are trying to set up systems in localities and regions which will enable those who work with young people to form these networks locally which can redirect the young people with whom they work away from crime, drug abuse and other such activities.
We receive funding through the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs which funds the staff salaries and a small programme budget. That will take us up to November this year. I am not sure if the committee has a copy of our strategic plan which was the basis of our last application for funding. It outlines Breaking Through's strategic plan from 2005 to 2009. The other funding proposal in front of members is to enable us to begin that process, to build on the work we have already done and to fund that which we need to do.
