This article is from page 6 of the 2012-02-14 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
CLARE’S Irish Wheelchair Association is to lose two thirds of its Community Employment (CE) funding this year.
The organisation that supports people with limited mobility throughout the county has had its funding slashed by € 16,000, from € 24,000 to € 8,000.
As many as 16 people are employed through the CE scheme providing administrative assistance to the charity as well as driving the buses, organising events and courses and providing support and assistance to the service users.
Up to now the local IWA was allocated € 1,500 for each CE participant – € 500 for training and € 1,000 for materials.
Johnny Crawford, Supervisor with the Irish Wheelchair Association in Clare, explained that this funding provided a vital role in delivering services to IWA users.
“In our context we have quite a lot of mandatory training to do, especially relating to heath and safety, manual handling, adult and child protection. We have a menu of mandatory courses to do that pretty much eats into the training budget. Beyond that if there is funding left over we offer it to people for something they want to do themselves outside of the mandatory courses,” he said.
The € 1,000 allocation is used to help fund the running costs of the office, help pay the rent, put diesel in the buses and cover other material costs.
It is through this funding, and the work of the 16 dedicated CE workers, that the IWA in Clare can provide outreach services in Cois Na hAbhana, Ennis, on Tuesday, Miltown Malbay on Monday and alternate between Kilrush and Ennistymon on Wednesday. An outreach programme is also provided in the family resource centre in Killaloe and Friday night is the social gathering for the younger people.
“Everything we do is driven by desires of service users. It is their programme,” he said.
He added the cut in funding would put added pressures on the charity’s fundraising, which has already been affected by the recession. “The loss is huge and it will affect the services without a doubt,” he said.
The CE programme is designed to help people who are long-term unemployed and other disadvantaged people to get back to work by offering part-time and temporary placements in jobs based within local communities.