Ballymun children turning up at education centre ‘hungry and sick’, notes letter to department

Children in Ballymun are suffering from a “dearth of basic health services” and some arrive at a local early-education centre having never seen a public health nurse, according to a letter to the Department of Children.

In a letter to the department’s assistant secretary general, dated July 13th, chairwoman of Poppintree Early Education Centre Gráinne McKenna wrote that since joining the board in 2018, she has witnessed the “gradual and deliberate reduction in Department of Children early childhood funding for children experiencing poverty-related vulnerability, socio-economic deprivation and social exclusion”.

This includes removal of targeted supports for children experiencing deprivation including the Community Childcare Subvention, Childcare Education and Training Support and Community Employment Childcare schemes.

Threat of ‘closure’

The letter, seen by The Irish Times, noted that withdrawal of these supports greatly affected the “future viability of the setting”.

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Poppintree Early Education Centre opened in 2010 and is a community-based, not-for-profit setting providing care and education to children aged from six months to four years. It and similar locations are “in threat of service reduction and closure”, the letter stated. And this could happen, potentially, within the next 12-18 months, said Ms McKenna.

Speaking at a seminar on ending child poverty on Friday, she said Poppintree Early Education Centre “only receives the same amount of funding from the department that children in areas like Sandymount or Clontarf do”.

The service caters for 40 children. Some of these often arrive “hungry, experiencing sickness and illness because of poor living conditions” and with “high levels of ear and eye infections and head lice”, said Ms McKenna.

“All of these things are really hard to contain when you’re living doubled up with your grannies or your uncles all in the same space,” she told the seminar.

Some of the children accessing the service had experienced “deep trauma”, witnessing murder or having parents who are in prison.

Inadequate funding

Ms McKenna wrote to the department in December 2018 and again in August 2020 outlining her concerns regarding the “high levels of need and inadequate funding” for early childhood settings operating in poor areas. Yet by the time of her latest correspondence to the department this July, there had been “no meaningful progress”, she said.

The funding made available to Poppintree Early Education Centre to provide early childhood education and care, from various iterations of department schemes, has fallen by just over 18 per cent since 2018. But staffing costs have increased by more than 58 per cent, from €294,054 in 2017 to €466,108 in 2023, due to requirements of the employment regulation order, minimum qualification requirements and the removal of the Community Employment scheme.

“If the community-based, not-for-profit infrastructure is not adequately supported, it is not sustainable. And it will be almost impossible to re-establish it in the future … I am asking that the [department] take immediate and meaningful action to ensure that there is an adequately resourced community-based infrastructure for children experiencing poverty and extreme vulnerability,” said Ms McKenna.

A spokesman for The Department of Children said that in 2023, for the first time, investment of more than €1 billion was allocated to early learning and childcare.

The older CCS and TEC schemes were replaced by the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) in 2019.

“The NCS is specifically designed so that those on the lowest income incomes received highest subsidies,” he said.

In June 2023, there were 122,000 children on NCS at a cost of €358 million allocated to the scheme.

Vulnerable children approved for a sponsorship subsidy could also be provided for by the Department funding their childcare place entirely, the spokesman said.