Local Fianna Fáil Deputy, Robert Troy, has welcomed details of additional supports that will provided for early years services in disadvantaged areas under Budget 2024, but has stressed that huge challenges still remain for parents, staff and providers.
“I welcome the detail provided by Minister O’Gorman on the measures under Budget 2024 on additional targeted and universal supports for early years services in disadvantaged areas. For too long, disadvantaged families have fallen through the cracks of our childcare services. We need equality in childcare and early years services and, while these supports will help massively, enormous challenges remain across the early services sector for families, staff and providers and everything possible must be done to make sure no child is left behind.”
In response to a further Parliamentary Question from Deputy Troy, about the Departments plans to extend the Access & Inclusion (AIM ) Model, Minister O’Gorman confirmed that there will be an expansion of AIM supports to children participating in The Early Childhood Care and Education Programme (ECCE ), beyond the Programme hours, from September 2024. Minister O’Gorman said that further details on how AIM will operate outside of the ECCE programme “will be made available as the detailed design advances.
“Extending AIM beyond the ECCE timetable is critically needed, as, according to the Department, 27,000 children have received over 60,000 targeted supports in over 4,000 services nationally since the programme’s introduction in 2016. Details on how AIM will operate outside of the ECCE programme must be published as soon as possible, given the enormous demand and the pressure it is placing on providers, with the proportion of services that have a child with additional needs attending increasing by almost half,” Deputy Troy stated.
