Cara Phort FRC at heartbeat of Ballynacargy community

Thomas Lyons

Toward the end of last year, the Cara Phort Family Resource Centre in Ballynacargy, received some good news; they were approved for substantial funding support from the Integration Fund 2025.

The Family Resource Centre (FRC) programme is about supporting communities. Funded by Tusla, The Child and Family Agency, it bridges the gaps in community support often overlooked by traditional State agencies.

The Cara Phort Family Resource Centre is a fine example of such centres. Since first opening in 2003, it has offered information, support, education, and training for families, running childcare, and fostering local groups, and acting as a crucial support system for community services.

“We work within the community development principles,” the centre’s co-ordinator, Anne Finneran, explained. “Family resource centres are founded in areas where there might be more social needs to be met.”

The essence of what FRCs do is in the name; a resource that supports families. The remit of Cara Phort is broad, and goals include promoting social inclusion, providing projects and programmes for the wider community and just being there as a place to gather.

“Whether it’s educational programmes, mindfulness programmes, health and wellbeing, or economic, safety, or security programmes, we provide many services from cradle to the grave,” Anne said.

The staff at the centre work with the children in the five national schools in the area: “Families that may have additional needs, perhaps because of addiction, homelessness, mental health, child protection, child welfare issues, will find the support they need in FRCs, but so will other families.”

“We have woodwork, computers and art and gardening groups. These are universally accessible courses, open for everybody. The perception that it’s only for people with problems could not be further from the truth.”

The open access of Cara Phort courses is vital: “We have funding from REACH to the LWETB to provide training courses. We also support people with making up their CVs, with job applications and interview prep.

“We try to fill the gaps alongside the statutory and community services in the area, fill those gaps and then step back,” Anne says.

Feeding into the FRC process are school principals, gardaí, local elected representatives, crèches, Teach Ceoil, and local GAA clubs: “We’re constantly looking for feedback. That helps us sets out our work plan for the year. We then apply for the grants to get the appropriate programmes up and running.”

In the two decades since it started,the ambition of Cara Phort has grown significantly. It’s one of two such centres in the county (the other is in Athlone): “A group of local people came together having identified the need to provide more employment opportunities. It’s definitely something we’re very lucky to have,” Anne said.

From coordinating the meals on wheels service to a hands-on approach to addressing loneliness in the community, the range of the service is immense: “We’ve had older persons struggling to get to their appointments due to financial constraints, sometimes appointments around cancer care.”

Part of the success of Cara Phort is down to the team. Anne speaks of the contribution of the St Patrick’s Local Employment Scheme which provides three community employment workers, Amanda, Dolores and Becky: “We’re fortunate to have those girls because they’re local, they’re embedded, they give direct feedback around what we need to do.”

At the end of last year, it was announced that the centre had been approved for nearly €100,000 in funding from the state’s Integration Fund 2025. It will provide a significant boost to the Cara Phort offering.

“Ireland’s cultural landscape is changing, every community is experiencing that change,” Anne said. “Our aim is promoting safety within the community, reducing misunderstanding and misconceptions about our newer community. The Integration Fund is going to allow us to continue the work we’re doing.

“It gives us funding to be able to do a bit more, like the work we do with the hub in Mearescourt, where a number of Ukrainians who fled the war in their home country are staying.”

Like much of the funding FRCs receive, there’s bureaucracy involved in meeting the conditions of the grant. Financial administrator Michelle Carballo plays a part in making sure all the correct boxes are ticked: “TUSLA provides us with our core funding. We do have a shortfall every year, so we’re always looking for other funding streams for our overheads. We do fundraising. Our second-hand shop is a good source of income to bridge that gap. We have various draws and annual raffles, of course the donations from the community are welcome.”

The service depends on the community, and likewise the community gets a real benefit from the FRC: “People can just come in and just enjoy being part of a group. It’s important for the community, and important for integration as well,” Michelle says,

Development worker Karen Malone is a relatively recent addition to the Cara Phort team, and is adapting well to the post: “It’s about trying to make sure everybody in the community feels welcome when they come through the door.

“We provide services that bring them in, but there is more. As Anne was saying, there are a lot of educational opportunities, but there are also people that don’t need that in the community – we have fun days and things like that. I want to get people to know that this is for them, encourage them to get involved and keep them coming in.”

That involvement can just be about the fun of bringing people together, and it can also be a way of coping with intergenerational trauma, or social issues affecting everyone.

Anne says everything the FRC do has a positive social impact: “Karen will be going up to the schools to meet with fifth and sixth class girls and boys. She will see what kind of cooking nutritionist workshops we can do, and what workshops they would like to do. It’s about filling that gap, constantly feeling the beat of what’s going on in the community. Karen identifies that and then we respond with workshops or other projects.”

Outside of the permanent staff, Cara Phort rely on the invaluable support of a number of volunteers: “We could span out over 24 kilometre radius when we’re delivering meals on wheels,” said Anne. “That’s where our volunteers come in. We couldn’t run meals on wheels without our volunteers. Our board of management are also volunteers and every FRC has to have a board of management for their governance and financial structure.”

“They give up their time every month to meet and make sure that they regulate. They’re also locals, which helps feed in to the heartbeat of the community, informing us what we need to focus on.”

Anne said the support of local elected representatives has also been of great help to the Ballynacargy FRC: “Peter Burke and Robert Troy have supported and advocated for our family resource centre to promote this work. We’d really like to extend a warm thank you to them for supporting us over the years.”

family resource centre to promote this work. We’d really like to extend a warm thank you to them for supporting us over the years.”