South West Wexford FRC

South West Wexford Community Development Group (SWWCDG), trading now as SWWFRC, was established in 1989 by members of the local community, who recognised the need to tackle the problems of unemployment, exclusion and disadvantage in the South West Wexford ('Hook') area.SWWCDG is a company limited by guarantee with charitable status managed by a voluntary management committee of Directors who are supported by a full and part-time staff complement of up to 40 full, part-time, and CE contract staff along with TUS participants. Since 1996, SWWCDG has been based in The Ramsgrange Centre Ramsgrange. The catchment area for project activities is in the seven parishes of Ramsgrange, Duncannon, Tintern, Horeswood, Clongeen, Carrig-on-Bannow, and Templetown. These seven parishes roughly fall within the following District Electoral Divisions: Rathroe, Templetown, Tintern, Ballyhack, Fethard, Killesk, Dunmain, Clongeen, and Bannow.

Funded Programmes at SWWFRC in 2022 include the following:

TUSLA Family Resource Centre Programme
Local Training Initiative in Tourism and Business
National Childcare Scheme
Community Employment Scheme (CE)
TUS Programme

Currently, we address the needs of local families and support them to access childcare facilities and supports, community-based youth work, provision of facilities and services for young people, local community services, counselling, sign-posting for information and delivery of education and training services locally and affordably in their own community @ The Ramsgrange Centre. We involve local people in the decision-making processes around these services and have done this through two and a half decades of relationship-building, tangible partnerships with the community and voluntary and statutory agencies at the local, regional and national levels. We have always looked at these services from a family support perspective. We are cognisant of the levels of need of rural families and the interagency approach necessary to meet these needs. We are also open to examining our work using other family support models and moving towards them more explicitly to meet local needs.

Family support services at the Centre have been evolving in response to our changing rural community needs, reflecting on our experience and analysing our strengths and challenges. As a result, we are moving towards delivering more cost-effective services to our target groups, which is challenging for some of our traditional service provisions. Now, working with TUSLA under the FRC Programme, we are committed to collaborating in our approach to family support service provision using the Meitheal approach and are open to all staff training under the new programme in this regard.

Our work has yielded many positive results for local people, with a particular focus on the needs of unemployed locals, one-parent families, older people, and rural youth. Over the next three years, we plan to continue and develop our work with families and aim to expand services with additional actions that will complement the prioritised elements of our local family support strategy over the next three years.

We strongly believe in our ability to continue to harness and develop local support to address local issues. We want to continue to work to do this without losing the local autonomy to make relevant local decisions. Our participation in the FRC programme has shown us and our community that even centralised policies and programmes can accommodate local situations to support them in retaining the unique features that make their proven ways of working successful. Our knowledge in action through the hands-on approach of local governance can now remain accountable and transparent with the FRC supports. Enabling and supporting established community development aligns with best practices for community and economic development and the sustainability of a strong and vibrant community here in SWW.

It is essential that The Ramsgrange Centre remains a core resource for this community and maintains a core budget, management structure, monitoring system and adequate policy and practice in governance to stay accountable and transparent to the public for all programmatic funding and activities the company may leverage on behalf of the community. This way, the Centre can continue to offer a basic safety net for rural families in these difficult times.