Report of the Task Force on the Child and Family Support Agency

3.2 Vision for the Child and Family Support Agency The Child and Family Support Agency, working in collaboration with the Department, provides leadership to relevant statutory and non-statutory agencies, ensuring that the conditions needed to achieve children’s wellbeing and development are fulfilled.

The Agency is responsible for the wellbeing of children and families who require targeted supports due to family and social circumstances. These range from support to families in the community to highly specialist interventions where children are at risk of being unsafe. Such children and families are not an isolated grouping nor are they a static grouping as children and families can move in and out of needing support as their life circumstances change.

In fulfilling its statutory role, the Agency ensures that: • The needs of such children and families are identified at the earliest sign of their emerging need; • A coordinated set of supports that addresses all the facets of a child’s wellbeing is put in place which incorporates and utilises well-developed interagency working mechanisms; • The effectiveness of the supports is monitored; • For the services provided directly or funded by the Agency, service delivery systems and practice are continuously reviewed to ensure they respond successfully to changing needs, and unmet need is clearly identified as a part of ongoing planning and reporting processes to the Department and the Minister; • It provides mechanisms to engage with children, families and communities regarding the design and quality of service provision.

The Agency operates on four levels of engagement and support to children and families: • The Agency aims, in as far as is possible, to support the more vulnerable child and family to participate in education, health and recreation services that cater for the universal needs of Ireland’s children. It engages with the providers of these universal services to children to ensure that: 1. In providing services to all children, they are capable of adapting to the needs of children who require additional social supports; 2. They give priority to identifying children and families who may need targeted supports and have the competence to do so; 3. They have a clear line of sight to the Agency’s targeted services, thus ensuring that no child falls between the cracks; 4. They act as “step down” services, providing ongoing support to children and parents who have availed of an early intervention or a high risk service and who still require some support, albeit at a lower level.

• In the interest of prevention, the Agency makes support services available to all children and families in the community in order to minimise the numbers who move into a position of vulnerability.

• The Agency also addresses the need for early intervention ensuring that those in need of targeted services are visible and are responded to in a timely manner with access to multi-disciplinary services.

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