Catherine Drea: Hope begins at the grassroots
The 1980s were the peak of a desolate period in Ireland. Following a huge injection of EU funds in the early 1990s, our first Anti-Poverty Strategy was launched. The key driver in this work was to find ways to empower local communities to tackle their own local issues and find the best solutions to their own problems. The thinking at the time was that the people closest to the problem were best placed to understand and respond.
The Government, through the Department of Social Welfare and the Combat Poverty Agency, fully supported this work to end poverty. Within a decade, the Community Development Programme, the Family Resource Centre Programme and the Specialist Support Agencies were thriving. Over the next 20 years, these programmes became leaders in Europe for initiative, change and empowerment.
In those days, community work was open and experimental. Brian Harvey has written extensively about this, and it was back to him that I went to see what eventually happened. There are reams written on the subject but, essentially, the people who had lived in poverty and exclusion became articulate activists through these programmes and a thorn in the side of politicians.
The outcome of local people speaking up and getting their voices heard about what needed to change showed just how well the programmes had worked. Unfortunately, the voices of the most marginalised and excluded were not always popular with the powers that be.
According to Brian Harvey, the notion of “anti-poverty work” became a threat to the mainstream and these innovative programmes were shunted from department to department. The relationships and understanding between the programmes and the original agencies were shattered. The Combat Poverty Agency was abolished, the Department of Social Welfare's input was abandoned, and funding was drastically reduced. The whole ethos and benefit of what was called “a bottom-up approach” was deemed far too challenging.
This way of working to empower the people who are closest to the issues was well demonstrated in the drugs campaign in inner-city Dublin during the 1980s. Concerned Parents Against Drugs were forced to highlight the drug epidemic in their communities through protest and campaigning. However, it is well known that it was only when the grieving mothers of heroin addicts who had died took it upon themselves to go to the Dáil and face down politicians with some hard truths that action, funding and a real response began.
Something very similar happened in the field of intellectual disabilities in Ireland around the same time. If you ever get a chance, try to see the film Born That Way, which outlines this through the story of the Camphill Community in Ireland.
Growing up in a community where two autistic children also lived, I was aware of autism probably even before it was fully recognised or understood. The parents of these children formed a group to explore how their children could be cared for in new and more humane ways. Their options for support or independent living were virtually non-existent. When they invited the Camphill Community to Kilkenny in the 1970s, their first port of call was the local mental hospital, where many local autistic teenagers were living.
My neighbours jumped at the chance to have their growing children cared for in the environment created by Camphill. Essentially, this meant living in a family setting on an organic farm. Again, it was the people most impacted by the issues feeling their way towards the best solutions.
It is sad today to see the movement known as “Before We Die” still trying to secure suitable long-term care for adult children with intellectual disabilities. While more than 2,500 places are needed by ageing parents, only 100 new places were announced in the budget.
Because we continue to ignore the expertise of parents and families, we still have huge numbers of vulnerable citizens who are not being supported in the ways they need. The latest studies suggest that one in five Europeans, including one in four children, are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. If we know anything, it is that poverty in childhood often leads to a host of other problems.
The EU has issued its first-ever Anti-Poverty Strategy with an ambition to eradicate poverty by 2050. We need to go back to basics and revisit what worked in the first place to address poverty in Ireland. We must start by bringing communities together for an honest evaluation of current problems and then work collectively on solutions. There is plenty of experience and a long track record of doing this here in Waterford and across the country. If people were genuinely given the power to get involved in decisions about their future, perhaps more creative solutions could emerge.
While protests sometimes release anger, they often fail to find solutions. To quote our Taoiseach when referring to a new anti-poverty programme for Ireland: “These challenges are complex, long-term and multi-dimensional.” In the 1990s, there was a huge upsurge of hope in communities. A bottom-up approach remains the best way to support families in a challenging world. It has been the failing of too many governments that this internationally valued way of working has not been adequately funded or supported. It is time to invest once again in fostering hope.
