A Brief History

The Holy Angels Day Care Centre began in 1978 in the basement of the old district hospital in Carlow. A retired Nun named Sr. Columba Flavin, a member of the Presentation Order saw that there was need for a day care service for children with special needs and went about setting it up. With a cheque for £100 from the South Eastern Health Board and the names of five children in the locality with special needs Holy Angels began.

At the time two local nurses gave their time free (Doris Doyle, Maude Lacey) for six months, and after this were paid a very small wage. Sr. Columba herself worked on a voluntary basis and continued to do so until her retirement in 1991. Shortly after setting up the centre a group of local people came together to form the Carlow Questiontime Committeee and set about raising much needed funds to develop the centre.

Doris Doyle and Maude Lacey with some of the children from the Holy Angels

Their first purchase was a small mini bus to bring the children to and from the centre. Again the position of driver for this mini bus was voluntary one and remained this way until 1992 when the centre were in a position to employ a driver and expand the bus service to give children outside the town area a service.

In 1983 our present centre was purchased at a price of £52,000. Half of this was raised by the Holy Angels with the help of Carlow Questiontime Committee and the other half by the South Eastern Health Board. The centre was an old knitwear factory and several renovationshad to be carried out. In April 1984 the late Dr. Patrick Lennon, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, officially opened our present centre.

Decisions on the placement of each child in the cente are made through the Early Intervention (E.I.T.). The Early Interventrion Team consists of a group of professionals involved in the area of learning disabilities e.g. Area Medical Officer, Special Liason Nurse, Physiotherapist, Psychologist, Speech & Language Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Social Workers and Managers of special centres such as the Holy Angels. The E.I.T. meets every six weeks to discuss the clients already attending the centre, or those whom they would consider suitable for placement.

After moving to our present location we set about raising funds to build a Hydrotherapy Unit for the children at our Centre. This was a very long process and took almost ten years to raise the necessary funds. Eventually in late 1997 our Hydrotherapy Unit was officially opened by the then President of Ireland, Mrs Mary Robinson. The total cost of this project was £164,000, the bulk of which was raised locally, with £30,000 coming from the National Lottery beneficiary fund. The children at the Centre all benefit greatly from the use of this facility and in December of 2000 we opened the Hydrotherapy Unit to members of the public who were referred for medical reasons e.g. stroke victims, arthritis etc. the cost of running this facility is between €12,000 to €15,000 per annum which does not include staff salaries. Although this means it is a very expensive facility and a continuous drain on our financial resources, it more than repays it's cost by the health giving benefits and therapeutic value it provides to young and old alike.

In the year 2000 we purchased a second mini-bus and now all children are offered a full five day placement. This was made possible by the National Lottery fund.

At present we have three separate classrooms at the centre for three very different groups of children, Tiny Tots looks after the younger children (our babies), Buzy Bee's looks after the children with behaviour problems and A.B.C. Land looks after the children who are almost ready to move onto "Big School".

We have one Physiotherapy Session per week which is not enough to ensure that all the children are seen on a regular basis. We have a full time Occupational Therapist, our Speech & Language Sessions have increased to four sessions per week but we would like this service to be full-time also. At present we have no Psychology Service at all.

These services are provided by the Health Service Executive. Our newest venture is our Respite Home, at present we are sharing a house with Delta Centre which has been rented by the H.S.E. Delta centre use the house during the week and we have had use of the house at the weekend once a month since October 2004. In time we hope to have a purpose built house for respite and be able to offer the service full time. This will depend on further funding from the H.S.E. So far we have offered weekend breaks to children from our centre and from St. Lazarian's Special School. This year 2006 we will be in a position to offer respite two weekends per month. We hope to have one full week in July and another full week in August. This service has proven to be very popular proving that respite care is a necessity rather than a luxury to this particular group and their families.