Gorey FRC

Provision of services and supports to local individuals and families

The centre has continued to work with other agencies and groups to develop and provide services in response to the needs of people from Gorey and surrounding areas (Ballycanew, Kilmuckridge, Courtown, Riverchapel, Hollyfort, Enniscorthy, Bunclody & Ballyfad).

The centre offers a broad range of activities, supports and services that enable local people to come along make friends, and access much-needed services, support and information on a range of entitlements and issues relevant to individuals and families. All of our work in the Family Resource Centre enhances the well-being of individuals and has a major impact on the children and families we endeavour to support and work with in Gorey.

The following is a summary of what the centre has been providing:

The demand for affordable counselling remains a significant need in the community and in 2017, 26 local clients per week availed of this service. In response, the centre has maintained a daily service through the generous efforts of seven counsellors working directly with clients. In addition, we have continued to avail of counselling supervisor Anne Colgan, for which we are very grateful, to offer monthly group supervision and support to the counsellors. A dedicated subgroup for the counselling service has focused on its maintenance and support to ensure continued quality and safety of service delivery.
In September this year working with Tusla we identified the need for family therapy sessions. We were very glad that Caroline Phelan, one of our psychotherapists, is an experienced family therapist and agreed to volunteer to see two families a week for therapy.
The Wexford Women’s Refuge provided an outreach support service on a very regular basis, offering court accompaniment and assistance in securing legal representation and in some cases accommodation to local women from Gorey and surrounding areas.
The Wexford Rape & Sexual Assault Support Services continues to offer counselling to local clients three days a week. On average counsellors are seeing four clients each day, that’s 12 local clients a week using the centre to avail of this vital specialised service.
Family Carers Ireland continues to hold monthly support information meetings in the centre on the last Wednesday of each month. Local people from Gorey and surrounding areas are able to access much-needed support such as information, training and advice to assist them in caring for family members in their homes.
Epilepsy Ireland sees local families in the centre, giving access to a national specialised agency to support them to deal with health issues as a result of epilepsy.
Gorey FRC are a member of the Gorey Transgender Steering Committee and this committee and group are linked to TENI, the national organisation supporting the youth and adult transgender community.
MEND, the South East Domestic Violence Intervention Programme, continues to meet with individual men from the Gorey area who want to address issues around their anger, abuse or violent behaviour towards their partners or children. The centre provides facilities for this important service that ensures increased safety for women and children by helping men who have taken responsibility for their abusive behaviour.

Specialised Family Support Work

Supervised Family Access Visits. The centre continued to provide the facilities of the family room in the centre five days a week to host supervised family access visits for children in foster care living in Gorey and surrounding areas. The centre staff offered support to the parents and the foster parents around these visits thereby ensuring that these were positive and safe events. The access visits are supervised by social workers from Tusla with the support of the centre staff. Children need to feel secure and the familiarity of having the same place and staff is a reassurance.

Tusla Social Work. The centre works in partnership with staff from Tusla supporting local families. This work can be the difference between a family getting through difficulty and having state intervention to ensure the safety of children. The centre provides much-needed interventions that can reduce the number of families that become another statistic of social work. The centre works with the Child and Family Network Co-coordinators through the Meitheal process to continue to assist local families. The centre in particular has been offering family and individual counselling and parenting programmes. The centre provides meeting room facilities for Tusla family case conferences.

The Wexford Traveller Women’s Community Health Programme has an ever-strengthening group meeting weekly to access activities to provide support and information to Traveller families. Staff in the centre work closely with the group leaders encouraging the participants to feel part of the daily activities in the centre. Members of the group are supported to participate in International Women’s Day and in the Domestic Violence Awareness events.

Welfare Rights and Information service is offered on a DROP IN basis, one-to-one practical support on a range of issues such as housing, social welfare entitlements, access to employment initiatives, education grants and referral to other agencies and groups.

Community Education Courses

The centre offers a weekly English language class for people who are not native speakers. We avail of Avril Williams from Gorey Language Centre who has years of experience in teaching people of various ages and nationalities.
The centre offered a course on stress management. This was very well attended and offered participants coping skills to improve mental health and anxiety.
The Crochet and Knitting skills class takes place every Wednesday evening, facilitated by volunteer Pamela McDonough.

Supporting community involvement

One-to-one cup of tea support service, this support has ranged from offering a listening ear to advocating on their behalf, validating them and guiding them towards the most appropriate support services. It has supported local parents to access education and training opportunities. The staff has noted an increase in the number of local people calling into the centre looking for support around housing, domestic violence, mental health issues and requests for support around young people self-harming.
The centre was the lead agency in establishing the Gorey Community Senior Citizens Christmas Party. The centre continues to play a leading role in working with the committee comprising local community Gardai, representatives from community alert schemes, the Gorey Unemployment Centre, St. Columba’s Oldfolks and St. Aidan’s services. This committee fundraised and organised the very successful annual Gorey Senior Citizens Party for the seventh year.
The established drop-in facility provides an opportunity for new people to call and find out what the centre can offer.
The Monday “Craft and Chat” activity group provided an opportunity for health awareness, social participation and inclusion. This is the first referral point for women coming into the centre and is run on a drop-in basis.
The Wednesday evening Women’s Group is a weekly developmental group which aims to support local women to feel part of their community. The group offers a broad range of activities both social and informative supporting women to develop confidence and has given women access to a greater understanding of mental and physical health issues. This has enabled women to develop ways to manage anxieties, stress and depression. The women were supported in organising activities for International Women’s Day and were involved in the 16 days of action against domestic violence.
The Men’s Development Group meets every Monday evening at 7.30 pm in the Centre this is a social group, offering friendship and support. The group has developed links with other men’s groups such as Gorey Men’s Shed and the Kilmuckridge Men’s Shed. They continued their involvement and support of Men’s Health Week in June They have engaged in a broad variety of activities throughout the year and have continued their cooking evenings on a monthly basis.
The Men’s Gardening Group meets three mornings a week in the centre, local men enjoy meeting up and growing vegetables in the polytunnel. This has been a lifesaver for them in terms of having somewhere to meet, to have someone to chat to and to realise a dream of growing their own food.
The New 2 Gorey women’s group uses the Centre to meet every Friday morning and on average they have up to 30 women attending weekly. The Centre continued to support the group to bring in new members. The Centre also supports this group to offer the Tesco food cloud every Friday morning.

Health Promotion events.

The Centre organised a number of health promotion events to create awareness. These included the Green Ribbon Mental Health Awareness and Europa Donna Ireland breast cancer awareness. The centre also took part in diabetes awareness month having the public health nurse in to give a workshop on diagnosing and managing your diabetes. The Irish Heart Foundation health morning provided information and blood pressure checks. The centre also took part in the Women’s Aid 16-day awareness campaign against domestic abuse.

Collaborative working

There is a very good relationship and collaborative approach with other agencies and organisations such as Gorey Youth Needs Group, Local Employment Services, St. Aidan’s Services, Barnardos and the local family support structures Tusla.
The centre continued as a member of the Gorey Youth Support Network and Wexford Network on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Abuse. The centre manager plays an active role through ongoing participation in these networks.
The centre manager also attends the South Eastern Regional Forum meetings.

Volunteers

The generous participation of our volunteers is an essential element in the continued operation of the centre by facilitating services or supporting staff and one for which we are continually grateful. In an effort to try and show our appreciation for their contribution we once again held our Volunteer Barbecque afternoon in July last. It has been through this voluntary resource that we have been able to offer opportunities such as parenting, life coaching and access to other training and education.