Initiative provides supports for drug users and families

A NEW strategic plan is set to be announced for Ballyfermot STAR CLG, an initiative that provides support for drug users, their families and the wider community.

The Ballyfermot STAR CLG Strategic Plan will be announced today, Thursday September 30 by Minister Frank Feighan via Zoom. This strategic plan will share key findings and recommendations from Alice O’ Flynn of Súil Eile consultancy, who was commissioned by the service to develop the new plan.

The service’s new strategic plan is informed by consulting with the families and communities with whom they work, their Board, the staff, and the funders.

Ballyfermot STAR CLG was set up after the publication of two ministerial reports on drug use in the late 1990’s, which identified Ballyfermot as having a significant drug problem, namely heroin at the time.

Ballyfermot Local Drugs Taskforce initiated a number of consultation meetings in the public library in 1997 and these meetings formed the basis of the first Ballyfermot Drugs Taskforce Plan and Ballyfermot STAR CLG grew out of this process.

Sunniva Finlay from Ballyfermot STAR

Speaking about the upcoming strategic plan, the service stated: “It is abundantly clear how embedded Ballyfermot Star CLG is now in the community and how respect, accountability and responsibility to community runs through all it does and represents.

“This is a significant strength and one which will be called upon increasingly in a post pandemic world where the ethos of community is coming very much to the fore and is at last being valued and recognised at a wider and deeper level.”

The foundations for the new strategic plan are built on the values of the community development, which include human rights, inclusion, empowerment, self-determination and collective action. In addition to these values, the skills that are required to translate these values into the lived experience of people who access the services, staff and communities of interest will also be embedded.