COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF CLONDALKIN, NEWCASTLE, RATHCOOLE, SAGGART AND BRITTAS AREA COMMITTEE

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

MOTION NO. 14

MOTION: Councillor F. Timmons

That this Area Committee requests that SDCC give a commitment to having all community centers catering for all the community needs and fully include those with additional needs, and develop a funding stream for sensory room's in all community centers around the county to avail of!

REPORT:

The Council Community Centres are managed by local voluntary Boards of Managements (established as independent Companies Limited by Guarantee) under management licence issued from the Council. The BOMs are tasked to run and manage their Community Centres, with the objective of providing a range of activities and services to cater and assist were possible, to meet locally identified needs of all in their respective local community, including those with additional needs.

A number of capital funding applications have previously been approved from within the Community Infrastructure Fund for Community Facilities BOMs wishing to install specific sensory rooms to help meet locally identified needs for such provisions within their buildings. This opportunity still remains within the Community Infrastructure Fund which will open for applications in April.

In addition to the potential for capital funding through the Community Infrastructure Fund, the Council's Community Development Team has also recently piloted the roll out of a Sensory Box Programme, where four local community centres, initially in the Rathfarnham area, will be provided with Sensory Boxes containing a range of sensory toys geared at children with sensory needs using the centres. The usage of the Sensory Boxes will be recorded and monitored to feed into a review of the scheme and pending positive results, consideration will be then given to roll the scheme out to additional community centre's in the county.