€36m plan for disadvantaged children

A €36 million programme to intervene in the lives of thousands of severely disadvantaged children will be announced by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Minister for Children Brian Lenihan next week.

The Prevention and Early Intervention Programme, being funded 50:50 by Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies and the Office for the Minister for Children (OMC), will finance three projects in the Dublin area for five years, with a long-term view to their successes informing and changing policy across the State.

The announcement, being made in Tallaght on Friday, will see contracts signed with the projects, which are in Tallaght, Darndale and Ballymun.

The programmes were chosen following three years of research and needs assessments of the children in these areas - carried out by the local communities - and the projects will be thoroughly monitored and evaluated throughout the five-year period.

Tom Costello, programme manager with the Atlantic Philanthropies disadvantaged children scheme, said each community had designed its own models which were radically different from anything that has gone before. The projects had identified the outcomes they wanted to change for their children and had worked backwards to the start to develop strategies to reach those goals. The strategies would bring existing services together and provide new ones, said Mr Costello.

"In this way the projects are different and they will be evidence-based, instead of what is more usual, where services are provided based on intuition and are reactive to needs."

Katherine Zappone, co-ordiator of the childhood development initiative in west Tallaght, said one of the things the initiative would provide was a new two-year pre-school programme. "It will be for three- and four-year-olds, five mornings a week, but also there will be an associated programme for the parents, to support them in supporting their child's learning." She said this programme would work closely with the HSE.

A similar after-school programme for older children will see literacy programmes after school, but also services aimed at supporting parents. This has been drawn up in conjunction with teachers, principals and parents.

"It is different to anything done before and it is very exciting," Ms Zappone said. Other environmental and safety programmes would be delivered in conjunction with such local bodies as South Dublin County Council and the Garda. A quarter of all under 15-year-olds in west Tallaght would benefit directly in the first five years, she said.

Among the projects being introduced by Young Ballymun will be one to mentor expectant mothers.