Ongar community service to be closed
Lack of funding leads to office closure

In late 2006 Blanchardstown Area Partnership (BAP) was granted funding of €146,312 by the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform to operate an outreach office in Ongar.

The purpose of the project was to provide a number of supports and services to the local community including access to the Local Employment service (LES), a one stop shop information service for local people and the development of a number of community development initiatives.

The outreach office was opened in April 2007 and quickly grew to provide an effective and much needed service for the 8,000 people living in the area.

According to Terry McCabe, Deputy Manager of the Partnership, “BAP has provided this service on a relatively small budget. The service is well used and it enables people to access relevant information, advice and support for progression to work and education, and also to integrate into the community.”

The project has proved an extremely successful and cost effective one and over 1,000 people have accessed the services of the Ongar office in the past year. Many of these were referred to other services in the area and over 150 clients were registered with the Local Employment Service during this period.

The number of clients accessing the Ongar service has risen steadily since it was established and in recent months following the downturn in the economy it has risen substantially.

The project was professionally evaluated at the end of 2007 and the research company involved recommended that it should receive ongoing funding “to secure, expand and develop the outreach service as a priority.”

Unfortunately the funding agencies have not seen fit to accept this recommendation and BAP have now announced that the office will be closed and the service withdrawn with effect from the end of this month.

“The pilot project ended in March but we got an extension until the end of April,” said Linda Curran, manager of Blanchardstown Area Partnership. “We provided funding of our own to keep it going to the end of June while we awaited a decision on our application to FÁS to continue the project until the end of the year. However we have just been told that it will not be possible for them to fund us, so we have no choice but to close it down.

“It has been a very successful operation and even though the needs of the area are huge, we just can’t keep going without resources. We have terrific staff employed there but now we will just have to let them go,” she said.

According to Burtenshaw Kenny Associates who carried out the evaluation of the project, “it is important to highlight that BAP provide the only dedicated community based service in the Ongar area. However, unless funding is secured to sustain the service it will close leaving the residents of Ongar with virtually no public services in their area.”

“This is not fair to our staff or our clients,” says Linda Curran. “We had three staff working in Ongar – a LES mediator, a contact support worker and a community outreach worker. Our LES worker is currently working with 61 local clients. This is a FÁS/LES service and it really should be properly resourced. The money needed to keep the service going is quite small in the context of the overall budget for Dublin 15.”

The irony of the current situation is that earlier this year the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs [which funds much of the work of the Partnership] proposed that the boundaries of area-based Partnerships should be extended under the cohesion process. As a result BAP agreed to accept responsibility for the provision of services to the whole of the Dublin 15 area.

Now, less than six months later, the first of these extended services has to be closed due to a failure of state agencies to fund this expansion.

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