Working to ease the lot of Ireland’s hidden poor

Date Published: {J}

The thing about modern poverty is that much of it is hidden, which makes it difficult for services to know who needs help but Professor Pat Dolan hopes that his research work will make it easier.

Pat has worked as a frontline worker, service manager and researcher in family support and community based interventions to help young people for about 25 years.

For well over a decade he has been an academic but his hands-on experience in the community gives him an understanding and insight into the problems of the very people his research is trying to assist.

Pat is joint founder and Director of the Child and Family Research Centre at NUI Galway and the Chairholder of Ireland’s first UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement.

He is passionate about wanting to improve the lot of families – everywhere not just in Ireland and he is currently concerned with the increased poverty levels of families in this country.

“I am very much interested in the current debate on debt forgiveness. It is interesting to hear politicians talking about bailing out the banks but not families, though I do accept that debt forgiveness, even for families, is not as straight forward as we think.

“The whole issue of poverty is going to become a huge issue within the next five years. When you see old black and white photographs of barefoot children in the Claddagh, you know they are poor but today’s poverty is not so easily seen.

“The Vincent de Paul Society can’t even cope with the number of requests for help . . . and then there are those families who don’t want to ask for help. Poverty today is much more hidden. For families under pressure it is not just one thing but a combination of things, like the washing machine breaks down the same week as the car has to be reinsured. One thing leads to another, just like the case highlighted last week in the media about the family who couldn’t put food on the table because they just about had enough money to pay the mortgage,” he says, referring to the man from Kerry who contacted RTÉ’s Liveline about his family’s situation.

Pat says it’s hard to believe that we have come to this state of affairs within a few short years. Four years ago, people were cashing in their SSAI savings, while today ordinary, hard working families are struggling with their finances.

The research carried out by the Child and Family Research Centre is usually commissioned by the HSE, Barnardos, the ISPCC and internationally for UNESCO, and helps ensure that services providing support for children and families are working efficiently and effectively.

Unlike many academics, Pat had years of experience in his specialist field before he became a professor.

A Dubliner, he came to Galway over 30 years ago to work in child guidance for the then Western Health Board. He was a community youth worker in Rahoon, where an initiative he started is still operating and was a founder of the GAF youth cafe.

He returned to college while still working full-time and parenting, he hastens to add. He did an MA in Trinity and a PhD in Belfast. From here he was seconded from the Health Board to NUIG to start up a Masters in a family support programme. That eventually led to the founding of the Centre with Dr John Canavan and Bernadine Brady. Today the Centre has 26 full-time workers, including PhD students.

In 2008, Pat became Ireland’s first UNESCO chair, work which has expanded the Centre’s research to Africa, notably Zambia, where Pat and his colleagues liaise with the Alan Kerin’s Projects. This work involves education, including AIDS and HIV awareness programmes, which Pat says have been very successful.

Much of Pat’s work is with the United Nations, which involves a lot of travel – he regularly visits Paris where the UNESCO headquarters are based.

He admits he is busy bu

t it is obvious that he is passionate about his work and believes that the Centre’s research will help improve life for families.

He is far too modest to list the number of well-known people he has come across in his international work but its well documented that the Centre is financed by Atlantic Philanthropies which was founded by the multi-millionaire Chuck Feeney, an Irish-American who has helped similar projects in the US and Africa.

“I have met Chuck a few times and you wouldn’t think he had a penny! He is very unassuming, a lovely man who has done so much to help people.”

Actor Cillian Murphy is a patron of the Centre and attended the launch of a new life course initiative recently in the college – his presence attracted a lot of female attention, according to Pat!

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.