Survivors of Institutional Abuse Support Services Partnership: Trip to Dublin

On Wednesday 2nd July, Patrica Carey and the team from the Special Advocate for Survivors of Institutional Abuse hosted the quarterly Support Services Partnership meeting at their offices in Dublin. These meetings bring together staff from across Britain who support people who were incarcerated in institutions in the Republic of Ireland.  

In attendance in Dublin were staff from Fréa Renewing Roots, London Irish Centre Survivors Integrated Service, Immigrant Counselling and Psychotherapy and Irish in Britain.

These meetings allow staff to use their both individual and collective experience in order to improve the support that we can offer to former residents of Ireland’s institutions.

One way that we can do this is to invite people involved with the Irish Government Action Plan to attend these meetings. As such this meeting was also attended the Payment Scheme Chief Deciding Officer Catríona O’ Connor and her colleague Sarah-Kate Keogh from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. This meant that one of the central focuses of this meeting was looking at applications to the Payment Scheme - difficulties that we had noted and potential improvements that could be implemented. These experiences and suggestions were raised directly to those who deal with the implementation of the Payment Scheme. 

This meeting was also attended by the Fiona Ryan and her team from the office of the Commissioner for Survivors of Institutional Childhood Abuse  in Northern Ireland. They were able to update us on their upcoming Payment Scheme for survivors of Mother and Baby institutions.  

The Support Services Survivors Partnership is an important forum that enables collective work and experiences of Irish organisations working across Britain amplify the voices of those whom we support.