Thank you. We are delighted to be here today and to have the opportunity to speak to the committee. I wish to give a brief run-through of perhaps ten minutes, giving the background to CAWT, its rationale and how we are moving forward. I hope members have copies of Powerpoint slides in front of them and I shall run through these quickly to give a flavour of CAWT.
By way of context, members will see there is a shaded area on those slides which indicates the area CAWT covers, namely, about one-third of the landmass of the island of Ireland. The rationale for CAWT is that we believe the further one is from the seat of Government, whether in Belfast or Dublin, the more one suffers in terms of peripherality and infrastructure. Part of the rationale for CAWT was to come together to see if we could pool resources and examine how we might improve the health of the population in the Border area.
As the Chairman stated, it is a partnership, primarily a virtual one. So, although I am director general of CAWT I also work in the health service in the North and serve in CAWT on a voluntary basis, as does Mr. Daly. Mrs. McCrory, our chief officer, works full-time in the CAWT development centre.
Some 1.6 million residents live in the area covered by CAWT. We have a common demography. Some of the research we have carried out indicates that the demography is very similar in terms of the aging population, disabilities and some of the disadvantages the population of the area has, on both sides of the Border. The critical mass of that population allows us to take forward a number of the operational projects we have on the ground and shows where it makes sense for us to co-operate on behalf of and for the benefit of the population in the Border area.
As a partnership CAWT has benefited in recent years from EU funding, INTERREG 3 and, lately, INTERREG 4A. Later in the presentation I will highlight some of the projects that have been funded by the latest INTERREG 4A funding and will give an indication of some of the projects which were funded previously through INTERREG. One thing I always say is that CAWT predated this. It was established in 1992, predated European funding and will post-date it in terms of the co-operation we have along the Border corridor.
I also highlight that, through INTERREG and European funding, CAWT's remit is wider than just the Border area. It covers all the North, excluding Belfast and those areas shaded in the map which relate to the southern side of the Border. Therefore, the learning from the projects we have on the ground is wider and I shall touch on some of that as we go along.
The lead partner in terms of European funding in INTERREG 4A is the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety. The project partner is the Department of Health and Children. So, while CAWT is implementing the INTERREG projects it does that on behalf of the two Departments, the HSE and the organisations in the North. The projects are synonymous with the strategies of both Departments and with the strategies of the organisations that straddle the Border.
With regard to how CAWT is organised, it has a management board, but it is a virtual management board because its members have other jobs as well. CAWT also has a secretariat, which is made up of people from the organisations who are, if one likes, a conduit into those organisations for each of the partners for easy access to information and analysis. We also have a CAWT development centre, led by Bernie McCrory, where approximately 12 people are employed. Obviously, with INTERREG 4A and the funding for that, we also have quite a number of projects on the ground. Therefore, for a temporary period we second other members of staff, primarily from within the HSE and the health and social care organisations north of the Border, to do that project work on a time limited basis. A tremendous amount of work also goes on over and above project work with regard to co-operation North and South from all of those organisations.
The business case we put to the Special EU Programmes Body, SEUPB, was a closed call for European funding. The closed call was to the two departments, the HSE in the South and the Western and Southern Health and Social Care Trusts in the North, and related to the funding available under INTERREG 4A. As mentioned already, the two departments asked CAWT to facilitate the work on that. As a result, we have 12 projects at different stages on the ground. Some are already up and running and others will be up and running in the near future. These projects cover a wide range of areas. They are: an acute hospital services project; a project on clinics for sexually transmitted infections; the development of eating disorder services; a project on multilevel alcohol harm reduction; a project called Turning the Curve which supports people with autism; a project on improving outcomes for children and families; support for older people; preventing and managing obesity; support for people with disability; tackling social exclusion and health inequalities; tackling diabetes in high risk clients; and workforce mobility. These are the projects on which the €30 million provided by INTERREG 4A to the two departments is being spent.
I have already touched briefly on the process of accessing the funding. The two Departments, through CAWT, engage widely with the stakeholders in both areas. The 12 projects have resulted from the priorities indicated by local people and those identified by both departments. These decided they were the priority areas on which we needed to focus and in which to invest. The closed call to the SEUPB was approved by both Ministers in June 2009. Following their approval, we have gone ahead to recruit to the projects and to set up all of the project management responsibility aspects of the projects.
One of the biggest and essential tasks for the future is to meet the European Union targets in terms of the profile of expenditure. We must also ensure that the projects we put on the ground have a real benefit for patients and clients. The evaluation we will carry out will indicate the projects we believe have been successful. The funding ceases in 2013 and the big challenge for us over the next two to three years will be to ensure we can mainstream or sustain the projects beyond the European funding. The partners in CAWT will be instrumental in ensuring we can do that. We already have commitments to the funding of some of the projects and we will work over the next couple of years with our partners and both departments to ensure the projects proven to be of benefit will be funded in the longer term.
On the issue of embedding cross-Border collaboration at a policy and health service level after the EU funding ends, while our current focus is very project orientated in terms of INTERREG 4A, we are conscious we need to ensure we learn from each other as we move forward. We have strategy groups who sit alongside the European funding and these groups generate new ideas and ways of co-operating and ensuring we can improve the health of the population in the Border area, over and above European funding. The members of the strategy groups are people who work in the service North and South.