Speech by Mrs. Sabina Higgins at the launch of the Report ‘Family Effects: Strengthening Families Programme 10 Year Outcomes in Irleand’
Axis Centre, Main Street, Ballymun, Dublin 9 Friday, 23 March 2018
I would like to thank you all for your very warm welcome and to thank the National Strengthening Families Programme Council of Ireland for their very kind invitation to launch this report evaluating as it does the effects of the Strengthening Families Programme over the past 10 years.
For me it is such a pleasure to see so many of public services personnel and community workers from the voluntary agencies and volunteers to have made this Programme possible here today, and the opportunity to listen to their own experiences of the positive impact the program has made in their communities. I would like to join with others in acknowledging the dedication and commitment exhibited by them day in and day out.
You are all to be commended for the work in facilitating this Programme, which has brought so many different agencies and organisations together for a common purpose.
We all have a very basic need for companionship and friendship, guidance and advice, and love and affection. In times of crisis we most often find ourselves turning to our families, and to our relationship with our children, our parents and our siblings, for help and support, and in turn we seek to give support to them when they are faced with adversity.
There is so much that so many families not seek shelter from today. Families face so many pressures from so many sources. The precarious economic situation for so many of our people remains as the Report reminds us, there is significant source of stress for parents and children. The new tools of social media for example can often be used to hurt, to harm and to bully, rather than to heal, which has such a harmful effect on the mental health of young people. Drug and alcohol abuse continues to harm not only the users, but also their families, causing heartache and sadness and even the despair.
These burdens, even if they seem to affect only one member of the family, are experienced by parents, children and siblings alike. By bringing together teenagers and their parents, the Strengthening Families Programme plays a vital role bringing hope by equipping families with the necessary life skills to face these challenges together, rather than on their own.
The Report we are launching today shows the difference the Programme can make in building the resilience of families and in improving family communication, family cohesion and family organisation. The Programme here in Ireland and programmes elsewhere have shown that this can reduce problem behaviour, improve school performance and reduce drug and alcohol abuse in young people.
The measure of outcomes is of course an important part of an evaluation of any programme. It allows us to see whether an intervention is working, where there is room for improvement, or where we might replicate a feature elsewhere, but the real test of the success of this Programme is the effect that it has on parents, children and families.
It is clear from the Report that parents have seen and experienced real and demonstrable improvements in their families and in the behaviour in their children and in their relationship with them.
It takes will, power and courage to undertake a Programme of this nature, and tenacity to see it through over 14 weeks, and so may I pay tribute to all those young people and their families who have taken part, 213 of whom live here in Ballymun.
May I congratulate you all and wish all of you the very best as you continue to implement Strengthening Families Programme in your own communities.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.