Ready, Steady …. Bye for now … to Ann Stellenberg who has gone on maternity leave …. and had a baby daughter
After five years work on the design and delivery of youngballymun Ann said farewell for a little while. On January 31st she gave birth to her and Redver’s baby daughter Isabella. All her friends and colleagues send Ann, Redvers and Isabella every good wish at this exciting time and we look forward to welcoming Isabella to Ballymun very soon!
….And Hello and Welcome to Pat Tobin and Cecilia Forrestal
Although it was hard saying goodbye to Ann it was made a little easier because we are welcoming Pat Tobin and Cecilia Forrestal from CAN to youngballymun . They join us as the joint Programme Managers who are job-sharing Ann’s post for her maternity leave. Our thanks to CAN for assisting us in this transition. It is great that Pat and Cecilia are already familiar with our work from their roles as facilitators in the service design process. Pat works with Ready, Steady, Grow, 3,4,5 Learning Years and Literacivic. Cecilia works with Incredible Years, Write-Minded and Jigsaw.
….And Congratulations and good wishes to Graham Connon
who has transferred from his position as clinical psychologist with Jigsaw-youngballymun to a permanent post with the HSE as senior clinical psychologist. Graham’s new post is in Ballymun and that he will continue to have links with community services.
…. And welcome to Antoinette Gibbs
who joins Joanne Waters in our 3,4,5 Learning Years team. Antoinette will support the implementation of Highscope in a number of early years services in Ballymun. 3,4,5 Learning Years is delivered in partnership with Barnardos and with local early care and education providers in Ballymun.
…. Welcome also to Liz Johnston
who joins our Incredible Years team as a parent trainer; Liz is one of our CAFTA colleagues and we are delighted to welcome her to youngballymun.
Incredible Years Parents Graduation
The most recent Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme graduation took place on the 9th of December in the reopened refurbished RECO in Ballymun. Between September and Christmas the Incredible Years trainers delivered three twelve week programmes and twenty-six participants graduated from this series of programme. There were twenty one mums, two dads, two grandmothers and one aunt. The packed event was attended by family and friends of the parents, representatives from the local schools and local agencies. Mary Fitzpatrick, a director of CAFTA and Eleanor McClorey of youngballymun, presented the participant certificates and a symbol to remind parents of their achievements. The programme has hugely expanded since our first graduate group of six brave parents back in 2008 but the great atmosphere, the support and the learning has stayed the same. Congratulations to our Incredible Parents!! We already have our next round of three parenting programmes for 2010 up and running.
A Reflection from Dr. Stuart Shanker on the time spent with youngballymun December 2009
Dr. Stuart Shanker spent a number of days in Ballymun principally involved in the A Child Is Born Conference and the presentation of two Infant Mental Health Workshops as part of the launch of Ready, Steady, Grow. More informally, he joined Sr. Majella, her team, parents and children for the Our Lady’s Nursery Nativity Play. He joined the Incredible Years parents’ celebration hosted by CAFTA and youngballymun in the RECO and Stuart visited the Ballymun East Child and Youth Centre where Ready, Steady, Grow is located with Professor Angeles Cerezo. He met with Mandy Murphy, the manager of Ballymun Women’s Resource Centre and with a parent in Sillogue who shared the pressures and anxieties of parenting in the dangerous and deteriorating conditions in the blocks.
On his return to Canada he shared some reflections on youngballymun. He identified three key factors that he considered critical for the success of the youngballymun change strategy – strategy design, service practitioners and community ownership.
He writes: “There are three factors that stand out in my mind:
1. The first is the overall design. A great deal of thought has gone into creating a seamless continuum of services. I know from personal experience just how challenging this can be. One not only has to find outstanding resources to target each of the age ranges one wants to cover, but programmes developed elsewhere that will be effective in a very different kind of community.
2. The people involved: What I found most exciting was to see practitioners’ enthusiasm, their commitment, and an incredible desire to work together. It struck me that having a management team that was so invested in these programmes and the incredibly active involvement of the programme-designers themselves was also key to the success you are already seeing.
3. The members of the community: their desire for change and their receptivity to the programmes that are being introduced. I could already see how the community was not just embracing youngballymun, but was making it their own: something that they were going to co-create.
Dr. Shanker concludes: “It is important for the sort of work that I do to understand the reasons why I felt so strongly that youngballymun is going to have such a powerful effect …..I have come back to Canada energized and inspired by everything you are doing”.
These critical reflections come at the important half-way mark for youngballymun, two and a half years into the first five years of the process and they encourage and rightly challenge us in our work. Right now, in the middle of all the activity of implementation and evaluation, they serve as a reminder to keep a focus on first principles – design, people, and community engagement and ownership.
- New office and resource base that is easy to drop into and get information and updates on Incredible Years and Write-Mind
youngballymun’s Community Bases
For the last two years we have developed our work from our offices on the third floor in Axis. However, now our services are up and running we want them to be based in more accessible premises around the community.
Ready, Steady, Grow is in the Ballymun East Child and Youth Centre in Hazelwood Close. This is a service delivery base. Parents bring their infants and toddlers there for the new baby development clinics run with the public health nurse team in Ballymun. We share the centre with the Shangan Aisling Project and the Plough Youth Club. The fact that RSG is in the grounds of the Virgin Mary Boy’s and Girl’s Schools means that we are every much connected in with services responding different ages and stages of children lives and their health, education and social and emotional needs.
Now Write-Minded and Incredible Years are on the move! They have a new office just opened on February 1st in the Ballymun Shopping Centre in the former coffee shop. This is an office and resource base that is easy to drop into and get information and updates on both services.
Evaluating Complex Community- Based Initiatives for Children and Families – a deliberative workshop
On January 28th the Centre for Effective Services and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago hosted with the International Network of Child Policy Research Centres a deliberative workshop on the challenges of evaluating complex community change initiatives. youngballymun is an example of such an initiative in that it is not one service or programme, rather it is a complex interweaving of programmes and activities across multiple partners and domains.
This kind of initiative throws up significant implementation and evaluation questions and challenges.
The workshop brought together a small group of stakeholders from both industrialised and less-developed countries all of whom are involved in conducting or using research to build evidence-based policy and interventions that address a broad range of social problems that have an impact on the well-being of young children, young people and families.
The event created a unique space for researchers, practitioners, philanthropy, policy makers and planners to develop a frank and reflective dialogue across disciplines, interests and boundaries.
The dialogue was structured around three key themes – the ‘evaluability’ of community initiatives, the implementation challenges and political dynamics and knowledge transfer and putting findings to use.
A Conference report will be available in due course from the Centre for Effective Services.
youngballymun’s Learning Community Fund
The youngballymun Learning Community Fund (LCF) was launched in September 09. The 300k fund (2009-12) is administered by the Ballymun Job Centre. The LCF Management Committee members are: Paddy White (yb, Chair), Gemma Cox (yb), Sandra Forbes (Ballymun Job Centre), Sabrina Staunton (Ballymun Job Centre), and three members with experience in support services to children and young people: Mary Brady (Tir Na Og early care and education centre), Michael Clear (Aisling after-school programme) and Michelle Murphy (BITE - Ballymun Initiative for Third Level Education).
The Fund supports training and professional development for local people who work or volunteer in services for children and young people in Ballymun across the age range pre-birth to early adulthood.
For further information on the Fund contact Sandra Forbes forbess@bmunjob.ie / 8667030
