THE KILLALOE-Ballina Family Resource Centre is preparing unveil a community garden and café following a number of upgrades to the facility.
The Centre has been in existence in the East Clare town since 2003. Initially operating out of a small house near the GAA club, the Killaloe-Ballina FRC relocated to main street before finally moving to their current location on the Green where they overlook the Church. The historic building was once the RIC Barracks, and in more recent years a creche.
Today, its integral role in the community continues and following an extension to the building, the Family Resource Centre has added a number of facilities including an outdoor seating area, a community hub café, a training kitchen, a training room and a community garden which overlooks the Shannon.
The return of a community hub café, which was previously open on Main Street until they moved into their new premises, will see the introduction of low-cost healthy food, and a space for people to socialise and learn more about the services on offer at the FRC.
Linda Stainsby has worked as a Community Development Worker since 2012. Much of her work consists of linking with community partners such as St Anne’s Secondary School, delivering programmes in the school around issues such as drugs & alcohol and LGBT+ issues. However, in more recent times she has been double jobbing as project manager for the new developments ongoing at the Green.
“We hope to create more pathways around training and education, for people to come in and do courses around horticulture and culinary skills, and then potentially link in with local employers,” explains Linda on the potential for the new hub.
The Killaloe-Ballina FRC has also recently announced a partnership with Clare Youth Services, with the building hosting a UBU Youth project and youth café. During the Junior and Leaving Certificate exams, more than 100 local youths attending St Anne’s Community College made use of the facility to decompress, play games and socialise during the exam period.
“We will also be linking in with the Brothers of Charity, so the training kitchen for example has a low level station so that people in a chair can easily work and hopefully do life skills and courses. The work we do is about working in partnership and meeting the needs of the community,” explains Linda.
The professional training kitchen will be used to run community courses with potential for healthy eating programmes, while it will be offered as a space to rent to members of the community. Linda continues, “A nice thing we do have is funding for a community food share project, where we invite people from different cultural backgrounds and new communities, to come in and maybe share their meals and recipes with people from different backgrounds.”
The Killaloe-Ballina FRC offers the community a number of supports including a family support worker, a parent support group, community arts, play therapy for children, counselling services, and a safehaven for members of the community to socialise, and has previously run ECDL accredited courses. “Mostly it’s very community-based stuff which is great because it’s really good for people’s wellbeing to just be able to come into a non-threatening situation where you can do some drawing or whatever.
“We found that during Covid the demand was much more for therapeutic services and now we’re increasing play therapy hours for younger children and we have a music therapist and some counsellors on board. People have been more isolated and difficulties that families have had were exacerbated during Covid.
“At some point in all our lives we all need a little bit of help and support, it doesn’t matter what economic background you’re from or what education you’ve had. It’s just really great to know there’s a reliable team here that will do our best to find out how we can help. On a day like today when it’s really lovely and everything seems to be well in the world, for somebody it’s not.”
The Killaloe-Ballina FRC is preparing to engage with the public on how to maximise the potential of their new facilities. “We’re talking about a men’s shed/women’s shed potentially here as well. We really would like to get a group together at this point of people from the community to talk about how this hub is going to work for the community. We have ideas, we want to know what people want to see happen.”
The hub is a cross-community development with funding coming from both Tipperary and Clare Leader companies, and the centre works with Limerick Clare Education & Training Board along with TETB. It’s expected that the upgrades will be completed in the coming months, with staff earmarking September for the introduction of new courses.
Administrator Bronagh Moriarty, who has been with the centre for 18 years, tells The Clare Echo that there is great excitement among staff ahead of the unveiling of their new facilities. “At the end of the garden, a cup of tea and sitting down there would raise anybody’s spirits.
“We’re very mindful of what we’re building that’s beyond ourselves. We won’t be here forever so you’re creating a space and it’s so vitally important that the community feels they own it. Hopefully it will thrive as a community space for a long time. We’re very excited and we just can’t wait for people to be able to come in and use the space.”
For more information on the Killaloe/Ballina Family Resource Centre, call (061) 374 741 or visit https://www.kbfrc.ie/
