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LCRL employs a Community Development Worker with Travellers who encourages Travellers to participate in activities and services and to work collectively together in challenging existing inequalities which can have a negative impact on Traveller health and wellbeing. The Community Development Worker with Travellers is supported under SICAP and funded by the HSE. The supports carried out are as follows:Supports to Individual Travellers and Families

Support is provided in relation to accommodation, education and employment. The Community Development Worker can support Travellers by:

  • Helping to fill in forms.
  • Helping you to find the right support services that will meet your needs.
  • Providing you with information, for example, on your rights and responsibilities as a tenant.
  • Providing you with information and guidance on training and courses available.
  • Supporting you to go about taking steps for yourself.

Working Collectively with Travellers

The Community Development Worker also:

  • Encourages Travellers to participate in groups which will lead to increased confidence, knowledge and skills and to take a lead in creating positive social change in County Longford.
  • Works with the Traveller community and the LCRL Traveller Primary Healthcare Project and other staff to identify gaps and barriers in service provision which Travellers experience.
  • Tries to ensure that issues experienced by Travellers in County Longford and suggestions to address these issues are heard. For example, locally at the Local Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee, and nationally by organisations such as Pavee Point and the Irish Traveller Movement who represent Travellers. 

Examples of work undertaken:-  Personal development course with young people in Youthreach; an accommodation survey with Travellers to inform the County Council’s Traveller Accommodation Plan; a young Traveller women’s group; ‘Active Citizenship’ training for Travellers.

Lorraine O’Reilly, Community Development Worker with Travellers, can be contacted on 087-9451771.

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