The need for increased family support services in Ireland, and more extensive research into the methods of support that make most difference for families, has been highlighted by the first International Conference on Family Support Evaluation.
The conference, organised by the Western Health Board, NUI Galway and Family Support Evaluation Network, heard new evidence that direct support to parents was a key ingredient in helping troubled children.
The regional co-ordinator for family support services with the Western Health Board, Mr Pat Dolan, and the research and evaluation officer at NUI Galway, Mr John Canavan, outlined the importance of more services and more focused research to help families and lessen the cost of expensive forms of care for children.
The conference was told the Western Health Board has increased the number of family support projects in the region from two in 1995 to 22 in 2001. There is also a strong commitment to family support in the board's forthcoming strategic plan for children and families.
Opening the conference in Galway, Ms Mary Banotti MEP said: "Family support evaluation is finding its feet. It is doing so in a system which has until recently tended to focus on picking up the pieces at times of crisis rather than setting out to equip all families with the skills to be healthy places in which we can all develop in a loved and loving context".
It was only in recent years that Ireland had begun to accept that holistic approaches were based on partnership between professionals, parents, children and the community.
Since much of the work in relation to the family had sought to identify and target problems and vulnerabilities rather than strengths and competences, the role of evaluation was critical, Ms Banotti said.
The shift from a prevention model to a holistic model required policies that developed a shared responsibility for caring for children, improved levels of low parental income, extended daycare and preschool educational provision and supported lifeskill educational programmes aimed at children, women and particularly men, she noted.
As a founder member of Women's Aid in Ireland in the 1970s, Ms Banotti said, she had vivid memories of the tolerance of violence against women in their homes and corporal punishment of children in schools.
She claimed that women's and children's organisations that challenged these norms had their work cut out, which confirmed the inequality of relationships in society and within families.
The keynote speaker, Dr Kieran McKeown, will today deliver a paper on the evaluation of the Irish National Springboard Family Support Programme, a nationwide set of 15 community-based projects. "Preventive community-based programmes are not just beneficial to the children who attend but also act as a strong source of support to parents," he said.
Speakers from the EU, South Africa, the US and the UK have echoed the importance of more comprehensive research into what works for families in adversity.
