Michael Ring
Ceist:110 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Health and Children his plans to set up family centres in areas where they are most needed. [31232/01]
Written Answers. - Homeless Persons.
Michael Ring
Ceist:111 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Health and Children if he will provide and staff family shelters for homeless children in cities throughout the country. [31233/01]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 110 and 111 together.
I understand that the Deputy's questions both refer to youth homelessness. Since 1997 and this year this Government has invested an additional £92 million – 116.82 million – revenue in child welfare and protection services. This has provided for a wide range of developments including alternative care services and family support and preventive services. The Government's commitment to tackling the problems of social exclusion in this area was underlined by the launch of the National Children's Strategy at the end of last year and the passing of the Children Act, 2001.
In January 1998, the Government established the young people at risk programme, the centre piece of which is the young people's facilities and services fund. An allocation of £7.2 million – 9.14 million – was made from this fund to launch the Springboard Initiative under which originally 14 projects were established with a further three developed in 2001. The objective of these projects is to assist children and young people to remain at home, out of trouble and in school by providing a proactive, inter-agency response to support these young people and their families. The projects provide for the establishment of formal collaborative structures involving relevant public agencies, the voluntary sector and the local community and the identification or establishment of a local centre which will act as a focal point for the delivery of services to children, young people and their families.
The recently published national health strategy proposes a number of actions to expand family support services. These include the refocusing of child welfare budgets over the next seven years to provide a more even balance between safeguarding activities and supportive programmes and the further development of Springboard projects and other family support initiatives. The Government has shown significant commitment to tackling youth homelessness. It has done this by targeting resources at the youth homeless service in the context of the development of the broader child welfare services. The main difficulty in regard to youth homelessness has been in the Dublin area and £6.6 million – 8.38 million – has been made available to date to the eastern region to address this problem.
A comprehensive package of child care service developments was agreed in 2000 to tackle youth homelessness and some of the key provisions of the package are as follows: a director of homelessness was appointed in 2000 and each of the three area health boards have appointed an additional assistant chief executive to allow for the enhanced provision of child care and youth homelessness services; outreach services are being expanded and restructured to ensure vulnerable young children are aware of all the new facilities and can avail of them; a provider forum which brings together the key statutory and voluntary service providers in the youth homelessness field has been established; each of the three area boards has carried out a review of existing facilities, and properties have been sourced to provide additional hostel-residential care accommodation. Taking account of emergency, short-term, downstream and mainstream child care residential facilities between 60 and 70, approximately, extra places have been provided; multidisciplinary teams are being developed to target young people at risk and-or out of home. Family resource centres, specialist services for children with addiction problems are being put in place.
Services for homeless children are also provided by the other health boards and generally these are provided as part of the child protection and welfare services. Emergency and other facilities have been developed in Cork, Limerick, Galway and other centres to cater for youth homelessness. Additional funding has been allocated to support these services.
On 31 October I published the youth homelessness strategy which complements the Government's strategy on adult and family homelessness. Homelessness – An Integrated Strategy, published by the Department of the Environment and Local Government. The strategy provides a strategic framework for youth homelessness to be tackled on a national basis. The goal of the strategy is "to reduce and if possible eliminate youth homelessness through preventative strategies and where a child becomes homeless to ensure that he-she benefits from a comprehensive range of services aimed at reintegrating him-her into his-her community as quickly as possible."
Each health board is currently in the process of drawing up a two year youth homelessness implementation plan following consultation with relevant statutory and voluntary providers in line with specific actions required under 12 objectives in three broad categories: preventive measures, responsive services and planning and administrative supports. The three area boards in the eastern region will develop a joint regional implementation plan.
The strategy also requires that a range of other bodies in the public sector, including schools, the National Education Welfare Board, local authorities, the city and county development boards to either support the actions of health boards or take specific steps themselves.
At national level, given the cross sectoral dimensions of youth homelessness, the National Children's Office will have lead responsibility for driving and co-ordinating the actions necessary to ensure the successful implementation of the strategy. The types of service needed to respond to youth homelessness including those referred to by the Deputy will be examined in this context.