Dear Family Member,
I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the Children & Young Persons (CYP) & Supports Services Team, to wish you all a very happy Christmas. This year has been a year like no other for all of the men, women, children, families and staff involved with the Children & Young Persons Services & Support Services.
For you as families, coping with the day to day impact of school and service closures as a result of Covid 19, I am sure, was not easy. However, presented with this challenge, your resilience and that of the staff in the CYP services was clearly evidenced.
One of the biggest impacts which you will have experienced form our service was the movement of clinical services to online, teleheatlh & virtual interventions. For many of you now, Zoom and WhatsApp have become familiar territory.
You will also have noticed that we have, with the assistance of our Open Training College, moved a number of our key training packages online for e.g. Early Bird, top tips for school, Hanen, Starting out etc. Some of our group interventions with children and families is now happening online also.
At the end of March 2020 we established a key contact initiative in CYP services, so that a clinician from your team would be your key reference point for any service queries. This initiative will remain in place for the foreseeable future while Covid 19 remains with us.
While some face to face interventions resumed by the end of August, this is only for urgent assessments and we will continue to keep this under review. Respite Services also resumed in June 2020 and some individual supports & summer support camps took place. However, we are still operating to reduced capacity, and this too is under continuous review.
In addition, though Covid 19 has impacted on some of the planning and development work normally undertaken by the CYP service some core development work continued e.g.:
- The Key-working pilot project completed in 2020, and the final report will be available shortly. A summary of the key findings has been made available to those who participated in the project. We anticipate that the key-working service will roll out across CYP services later in 2021.
- A submission was made to the HSE for additional respite and support services to meet growing needs across the service.
- Work has continued in preparation for the roll out of Progressing Disability Services (PDS). At the moment, active plans are in place in Dublin South which are supported by extensive teamwork. SMH, HSE and other agencies provide services to children with disabilities living in Dublin North City and County ( DNCC). These services will soon combine their staff to create 12 new Children Disability Network Teams (CDNT) , so that children will have access to supports regardless of where they live or the nature of their disability. St Michael’s House has recently recruited 4 Network Managers.
We will update you about PDS and other developments early in 2021.
I would like to conclude by wishing you and your family best wishes for 2021.
Kind Regards
Tracey McKenna
Director of CYP, On behalf of the Children’s Directorate Management Team