The Community Foundation for Ireland has supported Barnardos and their early years services in Dublin, Cork and Tipperary during the pandemic with a grant of €20,000 from our Covid Response Fund. These services continue to provide vital support to disadvantaged children and their families attending them. While children have been unable to attend the service during most of this period due to government restrictions, each day there has been deliveries of food parcels, hot meals and educational resources made to homes.
The aim of their Tús Maith programme is to prepare children attending for primary school and to develop the specific physical, emotional, social and cognitive skills necessary for this transition.
The communities where the services are based suffer from high levels of unemployment, poverty, anti-social behaviour and substance misuse. All of these challenges in their upbringing impacts upon the parent-child relationship and can result in children aged 3-5 years being at risk of not meeting their developmental milestones which can have a potentially critical long term impact on life outcomes. This is intensified by the fact that children were no longer able to attend services.
The outcomes observed for children who attend the service can be hugely beneficial to them and so it’s paramount to keep programmes like this running during the pandemic. Some of these include improved social, emotional and cognitive development, phonological awareness and language development as well as improved academic outcomes and better behavioural and emotional wellbeing. Our grant has supported the service to continue and adapt to the conditions of Covid-19 and to meet the needs of children at home.
Naomi Feely, Head of Philanthropy at Barnardos commented: “The closure of our Early Years services in mid-March was extremely worrying. As children could no longer come to our centres, remaining in touch with them and their families was crucial. With the support of the Community Foundation we were able to stay connected by providing food, educational resources and practical and emotional supports. She added: “To support children at the level of development that they had achieved before services were interrupted, we delivered resource packs with prepared activities for children based on Tús Maith curricula. Where practicable these were individualised to each child.”
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