Children’s early experiences shape how their brains grow and develop.
Parents play in crucial role in shaping their child’s development. Existing policy highlights the importance of supporting parents to ensure that children reach their full potential. Prevention and early intervention approaches are core to DFC’s work within the community.
We address parent and child needs through a range of evidence-informed and evidence-based programmes in order optimise child health and development and strengthen parent capacity. Importantly, supporting families at the earliest possible stage will reduce intergenerational disadvantage, and avoid the long-term costs associated with poverty, lack of access to early supports and social exclusion.
Our mission is to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for child and family support and provide a range of universal and targeted approaches, as well as information and advice, to meet family and children’s needs. Services are provided on-site, removing the need for families to travel, or link in, with different services. We work hard to develop and sustain partnerships with key agencies and organisations (HSE, Tusla, PHNs, CAMHS) which facilitates referrals and the coordination of supports to more effectively target families’ needs. In addition, all of our services address key policy objectives that mitigate the wider determinants of health and deprivation (see Figure below). In this respect, the Centre plays a vital role in promoting social and economic outcomes across Clondalkin, by directly contributing to existing policy targets, and by ensuring our services are underpinned by shared principles and values across key policy frameworks.
Deansrath Family Centre has grown substantially over the last 20 years and has consistently adapted in response to the increasing socioeconomic challenges.
An ever-increasing number of parents benefit from our Centre because we offer excellent care and education plus counselling and support to children and parents. A key challenge for the DFC is insufficient physical space to accommodate the increasing number of families within the Centre and in a single location. We urgently need adequate premises in order to extend our service provision. At present, service provision is fragmented and delivered across a number of sites. Despite the growing demand for additional services, and limited capacity to deliver additional programmes, the numbers of families waiting for services have continued to increase, placing additional pressure on the staff to maintain a consistent level of support and increase on-site service provision.
South Dublin County Council have provided the land for the new Centre in site in St. Cuthbert’s Park, Clondalkin. Our new Centre has been designed to accommodate the needs of the local community into the future. At 500 sq m, the Centre will be 3 times the size of the existing premises and will provide much needed additional space to facilitate the delivery of supports in one location – removing the need for families and staff to travel to other venues. The proposed Centre will include sufficient space to meet the community’s needs for early years care, family supports, staff rooms, as well as a flexible, multi-purpose recreation and family-focused space.
The Centre will be an important one-stop shop for a range of supports:
- A large Early Years facility;
- Dedicated rooms for parent/child programmes (parent and baby/child and parent and teenager);
- Therapy rooms and family/staff consultation rooms;
- Family spaces including parent and child cooking facilities and communal areas where families with young children can meet and connect with others;
- CoderDojo academy space;
- Staff training room;
- Parent outdoor space; and
- Outdoor playground.
The new Deansrath Community and Early Learning Centre will be designed to meet the RIAI 2030 Climate Challenge to reduce carbon and water use, improve site biodiversity and achieve core health and wellbeing targets. The design of the building is based around the passive house principles, i.e., reducing the energy load and carbon footprint of the building so that the demand on the earth’s resources is limited. This is done by placing windows towards the East, West and South to maximise solar gain. The insulation of the building will exceed National Building regulations in keeping the building warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
A continuous supply of fresh filtered air will be circulated by a mechanical heat recovery ventilation system, lowering the need for energy to heat the air. During warmer months the central atrium has the capacity to open up and let fresh air in to the building, by passing the ventilation system. Hot water will be provided by air sourced heat pumps boosted by solar panels on the roof which will generate electricity to heat the hot water cylinders and sell back excess electricity to the grid when necessary. Waste water will be filtered and reused for grey water reuse. There will be a storage facility for rainwater run-off.
Due to inadequate space, we are unable to help every child, and we currently have 64 children on our preschool ECCE waiting list and a further 76 children on the waiting list for our Play and Development Service. Furthermore, local public health nurses and disability network teams, as well as social workers, all refer into to our Centre so our work is critical for providing timely support to over 400 families annually. SDCC are currently building 1339 New Build Social Housing Units within immediate 5 minute walking distance of the Service & in addition 150 existing houses are coming back into SDCC Housing stock. A MUHDS (Clonburris ) also within walking distance, will, over the next number of years, see 60,000 new homes of which approximately 30% will be social/affordable housing with vast tracts of the entire scheme being bought by SDCC and AHBs.
We are extremely grateful to the HSE and Tusla for funding, and supporting, the work at Deansrath Family Centre over the last two decades. To meet the increasing demand for services through the build of a purpose built centre in the heart of the Community in St. Cuthberts Park we urgently require 4 million capital funding. This building will sustain our service provision into the future.
We remain committed to promoting child health and positive parenting and to ensuring that Clondalkin is served by sustainable programmes that have the means to change parenting behaviour and child outcomes for the better. We believe that continued collaboration and partnership working will be successful to the future delivery of DFC’s strategy and will help us achieve our vision of a sustainable and empowered community.
We would welcome any input or discussion towards the development and funding of our new Centre. Should you require further information, please contact: Siobhan Feehan, Centre Director, by email: siobhan@deansrathfamily.ie or tel: 01 (01) 457 4069.