The next matter on our agenda is a discussion with the Breaking Through network on the issue of funds for resourcing a national directory of youth at risk services and the establishment of a peer-to-peer support programme. I welcome Mr. Paul Flynn, vice chairman, Mr. James O'Leary, treasurer, Mr. Karl McGealy, south-west representative, and Ms Marie Halligan, national development officer. I advise the witnesses that certain members are attending the beginning of the Order of Business and will return shortly.
Breaking Through Network: Presentation.
Mr. Paul Flynn
I thank the joint committee for inviting us to appear before it. I am the vice chairman of Breaking Through, which is a voluntary management board. Ms Halligan is our full-time national director and Mr. O'Leary, our treasurer, is president of the National Youth Council of Ireland. I work for an organisation called CROSSCARE, which is the social care agency of the Dublin diocese. Mr. McGealy works in a single worker project on youth work in Ennis. I will first run through some background and then present our proposal.
Breaking Through was established in 1999 arising from a European conference that examined crime in disadvantaged areas. A recommendation was made to establish a support network to develop stronger links for practitioners working with young people at risk. This conference was hosted by Copping On, a national crime awareness initiative. The primary focus of this network is on co-ordinating and developing strong links for practitioners working with young people at risk throughout the island of Ireland. This is to be achieved through the development and promotion of training and information based on best practice and promoting public awareness on issues pertaining to young people at risk. Thus the Breaking Through network was established as a voluntary organisation serving practitioners in Ireland. We do no face-to-face work with young people. Our role is primarily to support the practitioners, many of whom find themselves in isolated positions either in poorly funded projects or in larger organisations such as the HSE or the Garda Síochána where they find the levels of support are not what they should be. Our members report this daily.
The network aims to promote a more unified knowledge and support base among practitioners rather than relying on various sub-groups and individual learning. In our professional roles we all have support groups, for example I work in the emergency homeless sector in Dublin and we have a group that specialises in that. However what makes Breaking Through more valuable and important is its holistic approach to people at risk and supporting practitioners. We get the opportunity to meet individuals from Traveller training centres, youth work centres, schools, police forces and area partnerships. This allows us to have an holistic view on how we practitioners deal with young people at risk. We hope to achieve our objectives by offering network support to encourage practitioners to share their unique levels of knowledge and experience of what makes good practice, the factors that block effective interventions as well as the unique characteristics of young people at risk.
The five core objectives are as follows: facilitate links through local, regional and cross-Border networks; promote partnership and interagency co-operation; collate, document and share good practice in the area of young people at risk; provide informed support for practitioners within an atmosphere of mutual respect; and influence policy and programme development.
As I said, Breaking Through is an all-island organisation with members North and South. Members include Killarney Youthreach from Kerry, Prison Me No-Way, a young offenders' initiative in the North, the Midland Regional Youth Service, CBS Synge Street, St. Finbar's Senior Traveller Centre in Cork, PAUL Partnership in Limerick, the HSE, Ballinasloe Youthreach and the Finglas Cabra Partnership. Membership is wide and varied to enable the network to have an holistic approach to providing services to practitioners who work with young people at risk.
An overall profile of the membership reflects policy makers and individuals working in youth services, vocational education training centres, residential care, the Garda, partnership programmes, former health boards, drug task force initiatives and Traveller training centres. As an organisation, we do not provide any direct services for young people. Our purpose is to support our members, the practitioners, by providing better structures and support so they can provide a better service for the young people with whom they work. Many of our members work on single worker projects or within a small staff team. These projects do not have sufficient budgets or management structures for staff training or development. Therefore Breaking Through is a vital link in providing a support network for such practitioners working with young people at risk. Over the past seven years Breaking Through has grown from a small beginning to a national organisation, a committed network of volunteers providing information, advice and support.
The annual national conference is the primary process through which our goal is achieved. This October the seventh national conference was held over two days in Athlone. Previous conference titles include: De Kidz r OK, Its Us Who Need to Change — Self Reflection and Personal Awareness, Exploring the Struggles and Experiences of Young People at Risk Today; Cause and Effect — Young People are the Cause of All Our Problems!; Walking in the Other Person's Shoes — Challenging Practitioners to Step Outside of Their Own Thinking; and Mentoring — Developing New and Progressive Methods for Practitioners, which was our most recent and one of our most successful conferences. The ideas for these conference subjects came directly from the membership, not the national committee. On a regular basis at meetings the members tell us the direction they want us to take.
The organisation is broken into seven regions, each of which is responsible for its own local support networks. To date they have run training courses and support programmes with titles such as: Suicide Prevention and Intervention; Suicide and Bereavement; Separated Children Seeking Asylum; Bullying; Sourcing the Sanity — Approaches to Meeting Adolescent Psychological Needs; Staff Support; Engaging the Unattached, which examined ways of engaging young homeless people; and Who Cares?, which looked at how we can support staff so they can relate better to young people.
The network has been acutely aware of the need to present arguments at policy level in addition to being able to point to examples of good practice. Submissions have been made to various Departments in recent years on educational disadvantage, child care cutbacks, the victim information scheme in Northern Ireland, youth justice, under age alcohol misuse, resources for unaccompanied minors and Garda clearance for all youth workers.
During the past three years Breaking Through has sourced funding from the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs to employ a full-time national development officer and fund a small office grant. That tranche of funding is coming to an end and if funding is not gained to enable us to continue our work, the organisation will no longer exist. One of the main tasks of the past three years was to produce our strategic plan, a comprehensive document. We have copies which we can distribute to members of the committee later. It is a chicken and egg situation. While the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs was happy to give us funding to produce this document, we have been unable to get an answer on the continuation of that funding so that the strategic plan can be carried out. We need to move forward, examine issues raised in the strategic plan and put forward proposals to carry them out. We are in a ridiculous situation in which a Department has funded us to produce this document but has not given us any concrete decision on whether it will give us more funding to continue the work we have done. On the back page of our strategic plan we have listed our funding proposal. I agree with previous speakers that €135,000 per annum is not a great deal of money. We are looking for a Department, whether it be the Department of Health and Children or the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, to decide that the funding is very cost effective and supports an effective programme. We want long-term funding.
I welcome the delegation and thank it for its presentation, which was very informative. Most of us would support its project and recognise that it needs long-term stable funding. Has it made a presentation to the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights or to the Joint Committee on Education and Science? If not, we might forward the submission to those committees because it appears from the presentation that it would be more appropriately dealt with across two or three committees rather than just the Joint Committee on Health and Children.
Ms Marie Halligan
We made representations to the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs earlier this year and to the Department of Education and Science. We met officials of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in January this year. In recent weeks we have been advised that our funding has been extended for a further six months, bringing us as far as May 2007. That, however, does not allow us to move forward or facilitate the strategic planning we have in mind for the next five years. We would be very grateful to meet whatever Department the Deputy feels would be appropriate.
I was talking about the all-party committees, such as the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights or the Joint Committee on Education and Science. I am sure they would provide support, as will we, and they have similar access to the respective Departments of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and Education and Science, and to the relevant Ministers, as we have to the Department of Health and Children.
Ms Halligan
We made representations to the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights and the Joint Committee on Education and Science.
Mr. Flynn
We have forwarded written submissions to the Departments but have not been invited to a forum such as this.
If there is a backlog we can send the documentation on from this committee.
When did the witnesses make those submissions?
Ms Halligan
Earlier this year and in December 2005. We met officials of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in January this year.
What was their response?
Ms Halligan
New funding will be available and will be advertised later this year.
They are aware of the situation.
Ms Halligan
Yes.
How many clients are dealt with by the advisory service and what is the level of contact with young people? I appreciate that Breaking Through is an advisory educational group which offers support to its members but I am interested to know how the service impacts locally.
Ms Halligan
We have between 50 and 60 organisations in our membership.
Can Ms Halligan give an example of the type of organisation?
Ms Halligan
They would include the Health Service Executive, Traveller training centres, partnership programmes, school completion programmes, members of drugs task forces. We also have single project workers, Mr. KarlMcGealy being an example. Other organisations vary from small staff teams of five people up to teams of 20 and even as high as 50. By becoming a member of Breaking Through all their staff have access to our training programmes, facilities and information. We are a support network for the worker and do not deal directly with young people. We hope that by supporting the worker they will be able to achieve more for their clients.
I know Breaking Through is an umbrella organisation and that the people it represents have diverse needs. How does the organisation meet the people it represents and disseminate information to them? It obviously does not tell them how to do their jobs because their needs are so different.
Any funding is welcome and Government funding seems to be spread across a number of Departments. Sometimes we feel there is no co-ordination in how it is allocated. As a member of the Opposition, funding seems to be based on political decisions rather than needs. Some people have told me a poverty industry exists involving a huge number of organisations seeking funding and producing questionable results.
Government funding seems even to neutralise the ability of organisations to represent the needs of the people they are supposed to help. If an organisation receives between 70% and 80% of its funding from the HSE, it is very difficult to represent clients and, at the same time, be critical of Government or HSE policy. There is anecdotal evidence that some organisations have had their funding cut or frozen in recent years when they have been vocal about Government policy. How does Breaking Through talk about that when it contemplates moving forward? "Moving forward" is an expression that annoys me as another industry seems to have built up around new terminology.
Does Breaking Through have any plans to link up with other organisations to explore more independent or co-ordinated sources of funding? The funding the organisation receives certainly does not rank with the larger organisations. Does it feel that, as a result, it is not given the same priority as other organisations?
Mr. Flynn
The poverty industry is a burning issue for Breaking Through and we see it weekly. I work in the north inner city and attended a meeting last week of six or seven youth work projects where there was no co-ordination. They were all funded by different national organisations.
This document states that the people with whom we deal need not so much more funding, for once, but co-ordination of resources. Unfortunately, because they are funded to carry out a specific piece of work by a Department or youth work agency, that is what they concentrate on. They do not have the time, the space or the resources to look at the bigger picture. We set this organisation up as a co-ordinating body to convince those six youth workers — whether they be male or female — that they could be far more effective if they co-ordinated their work and resources. Unfortunately, there is still ownership of funding and, by extension, of young people. If we do not have a certain number of young people in our service, we worry whether we will receive funding next year.
Breaking Through attempts to solidify services rather than attaining more funding for other youth workers or services. It is concerned with pinpointing to the smaller local youth work services, North and South, how they can do their job better and how we can help them do so with the resources we have. Deputy Twomey is probably right. Sometimes there is a good deal of whingeing, for want of a better word, regarding the lack of resources and funding although some areas are highly funded at the expense of others. The entire poverty industry issue must be considered.
We have had that debate, which is why we have asked for a co-ordinating role. Let us make such people aware there is a bigger picture. Let us enable them and support them to consider the bigger issues, such as the entire lobbying aspect to which we referred in our presentation. As an organisation, Breaking Through can access forums like this and can lobby Departments. However, the six youth workers about which I spoke can never, as part of their daily work, individually arrive at the point at which they see themselves as part of the bigger picture, or in turn can involve their younger people in being part of it.
As for our funding, I consider Breaking Through to be a unique body. I am unaware of any other similar support body that deals with North and South or that deals with such a diverse range of youth services. By "diverse" I mean we see ourselves as catering for young people between the ages of 12 and 25 and sometimes even below the age of 12. This was in reply to one of the Deputy's questions.
How does Breaking Through disseminate its information? Does it hold meetings or use other methods?
Mr. Flynn
While there are seven regional Breaking Through networks that are autonomous, a member sits on each board. Issues for each area will be dealt within that area. This is why we hope the peer to peer support mechanism that we wish to set up will flourish locally, as opposed to nationally. We envisage local agendas, in which the agendas in Dublin or Limerick would be completely different because the local workers would have different ways of operating and would support one another in different ways. In a sense, we try to keep the power base local.
From a national perspective, we disseminate all our information through our website. Every six weeks we hold a national committee meeting that takes on board views of members regarding ways forward and matters on which to work. In this respect, we produce a bimonthly newsletter that is sent to members. In addition, if members have an issue that requires lobbying, we will inform the other members and will send them working papers to which we ask for comments to be added. However, the national conference is probably the only event at which we see everyone together.
Mr. Karl McGealy
On the point regarding the dissemination of information, one of the Breaking Through organisation's main attributes is its person-centred approach. As Mr. Flynn noted, it involves peer to peer support.
As a practising youth worker, I can avail of information from statutory bodies by clicking on to the Internet. However, it is difficult to get personal peer to peer mentoring. I refer to the ability to pick up the telephone, or to call around and simply have a chat with someone on how one might approach a particular scenario, or to be able to talk to someone who one knows to be available as a non-judgmental support.
Like many other people, I am in a single worker project, in which two to three people work alone while feeling they plough a lonely furrow. I will state openly that we work with youths who are at risk, as we now view all youths as being at risk or perhaps finding themselves on the fringe of society at some point in their lives. The practitioners who work with them also find themselves somewhat isolated. This includes people in bigger organisations such as the Health Service Executive as well as ourselves. We mentioned that our last conference on mentoring was unbelievably popular because of the numbers of people in my situation who are calling out for a support system such as Breaking Through. Such people know where to find information, know the needs of policymakers and know what must be developed. However, the main assistance they seek is peer to peer or one to one mentoring support. Uniquely, this is what Breaking Through offers, namely, a service whereby practitioners can pick up the telephone and contact people with valuable experience in the field.
Although Mr. McGealy works as a single project individual, he runs a project for someone. I presume it is the HSE.
Mr. McGealy
Yes, via the HSE, I run a project for the National Association of Travellers Training Centres.
There must be a process in which Mr. McGealy can report back to someone.
Mr. McGealy
Yes, there is.
Does Mr. McGealy believe he cannot get that level of mentoring from that process? Does this organisation provide him with a better service? Is it better because it is non-judgmental, or because it acts as a friend to friend mentoring service, rather than being perceived as an hierarchical system of mentoring? Is that the advantage to which he referred?
Mr. McGealy
In respect of the hierarchy of my supports, like many others I have a voluntary committee, whose members have their own projects. Often they have extended themselves to support an initiative such as mine in a voluntary capacity. Do I feel free to ring the chairman or other members to discuss daily challenges? No, I do not feel as free to so do as I would when picking up the telephone and ringing my colleagues or meeting for a discussion on an issue.
Moreover, in terms of experience, a voluntary committee can consist of people who might not have the requisite practical experience. Sometimes I deal with extremely specific cases of young people's issues, including mental health, depression, domestic violence and substance abuse.
We have found that youths at risk are no longer predominantly from one socio-economic background or other, but can be found facing these problems throughout our society. I know that Breaking Through has members with expertise in a particular field and its advantage rests on this expertise. At times one might feel like a whistleblower contacting these experts on a certain issue, but we are non-judgmental and this is a minor aspect. The main thing is that I know I am dealing with someone who has many years of expertise and is available to me in a supportive capacity. He or she will help and support me face the challenge from my perspective in supporting a person.
Mr. Flynn
To follow on from that point, it is important to recognise that Breaking Through can and does play both those roles. When one encounters problems with one's voluntary board of management, the expertise referred to by Mr. McGealy is available within Breaking Through. One can discuss the issues within the local networks before one approaches one's board. We are not attempting to take anyone's place and do not suggest that the HSE, the Garda or the boards of management do not do their support jobs properly. Our point is that extra support is available and that all of us, including the young people on the ground and the practitioners in particular, need that extra support.
At the last committee meeting to which we were invited, I noted that people are leaving the care and youth work services for other occupations. They do so because of the perceived lack of support from the people around them rather than because of job satisfaction issues. This organisation is trying to set up scenarios that will make it easier for people to do their jobs and will make it easier for people such as Mr. McGealy to approach his board with a particular problem after bouncing it off three or four other members of Breaking Through.
What does Mr. Flynn hope to get from this joint committee meeting?
Mr. Flynn
Basically, we seek support from members of this joint committee when our applications are on funders' desks.
Thus far, the delegation has met the Oireachtas Joint Committees on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and Social and Family Affairs. It has appeared before this committee and Deputy Devins has suggested that the witnesses could meet the Oireachtas Joint Committees on Education and Science and Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights. Obviously, it is a matter of trying to track through all of the submissions made by the organisation. While we will try to do that for the witnesses, we cannot do much more. I hope the witnesses' expectations are not so high as to believe we can effect such change, because we cannot.
As a division has been called in the Dáil, the meeting will wrap up shortly. I thank the delegation for presenting its submission to the joint committee. We will do whatever we can to help the group to prioritise its case.
Senator Browne has generously suggested that we leave his motion until the next meeting. Equally generously, I have said it will be at the top of the agenda.
As we are in a festive mood, I will defer my motion until next week. Perhaps we could try to achieve support for a cross-party motion that takes account of the amendment.
That is very kind of the Senator.
Perhaps Deputy Devins will second the motion.
We will put our heads together to work that out. There will be no fighting in the trenches between now and Christmas.
The joint committee adjourned at 11.10 a.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, 16 November 2006.