Women's information centre opened
Michael Power, chairman of the Teach Tearmain Project; Jacinta Carey, project manager; An Tanaiste, Mary Harney TD; and Noleen Kavanagh, outreach worker; at the official opening of the new information centre.
NEWBRIDGE, 19 April 2002: by Brian Byrne. A newly-developed information centre for the Teach Tearmainn Co Kildare Women’s Refuge Project was officially opened this afternoon by An Tanaiste, Mary Harney TD.
The centre includes interview and training areas as well as being an administrative HQ for the project, which hopes to have a full refuge service for Co Kildare and West Wicklow within a year.
“We have recently been given a site by Kildare County Council and we’re in the design process for the refuge, which will be able to cater for four families at any one time,” says Jacinta Carey, project manager. “It will include a self-contained unit suitable for a family with older children.”
Currently, any woman or family needing refuge is found accommodation in either Dublin or Kilkenny, both areas already under pressure to deal with their own county problems.
The project is the result of the work of a task force set up in 1998, under the aegis of the Newbridge Community Development ‘Integrated Social and Economic Community Action Plan’. It is also affiliated to the National Network of Women’s Refuges and Support Services and the Irish Council for Social Housing.
The operation is 95% funded by the South Western Health Board and until the opening of its own centre in Eyre St today it was located in a room in St Anne’s Parish Centre.
In addition to being a focus for information, the project has an outreach service. As well as Jacinta, the project employs Noleen Kavanagh, a full-time outreach worker.
There are 23 volunteers who man telephones and carry out other work. An education element is aimed Transition Year students, where talks are given on relationships, how to create good ones or get out of bad ones.
“The problems we see are not just spousal abuse,” Jacinta notes. “There can be abuse in teenage relationships, and there are also other issues such as an older parent being abused by their adult children”
At today’s opening, Mary Harney said that it seemed in times which are much more prosperous than they used to be, older value systems seemed to have slipped away. She complimented the people who had developed the project, and said she knew they would be providing ‘a very professional’ service.
The chairman of the project’s board, Michael Power, presented the minister with a framed copy of the ‘barbed wire-bound heart’ symbol of the project.
The Tanaiste with Fr Richard Walsh OP and Michael Mullaly of Newbridge Community Development.
©2002knn