Annual Report: 1st April 1989 - 31st March 1990

During the past year, our first year as an independent organisation, we gave special attention to the restructuring of our senior management and our fund-raising arrangements so as to ensure the continuing high performance of our services. In that regard we were also helped by the completion of our new central office in Christchurch Square. It will give us more elbow room than we had in our former premises as well as conference and other facilities vital to an active organisation such as Barnardo’s. The Director's report gives details of our work during the last year including a number of new initiatives that we have undertaken. In selecting our programme of work for the future we shall continue to give first priority to the needs of children and families with special difficulties. Sadly, there are many such families who would benefit from the type of support which Barnardo’s can offer but, regretfully, we cannot meet all the demands on us. We have, however, the capacity to expand as our resources increase. We have now built up a highly skilled and experienced team of professional workers. We are happy to be in a position to make their expertise and knowledge generally available through publications and seminars and through our advisory services in the areas of the quality of pre-school care and adoption. We shall, too, be developing our capacity for research and for evaluating services and we hope that the outcome of this work will be of general interest to those involved within the child care area. We shall also continue in our efforts to influence public policy in regard to desirable developments in services and in the law regarding the welfare of children and the family in general. We are grateful for the continuing financial support of the Departments of Health and Education, the Eastern Health Board, Dublin Corporation and Irish Youth Foundation and for their continued confidence in us. But we are, I would emphasise, a voluntary organisation and we depend for a very significant portion of our funding on the generosity of the public. Our work, essentially, has to do with making children happy. We feel sure that the public will continue to ensure that we can do so.

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