Community Development
For a long time, Exchange House had recognised the need for a Community Development response to many of the issues facing its service users. This need was finally addressed in 2001 with the employment of Barney Power as a Community Development Worker. Being a member of the Traveller community means Barney is well placed to understand the issues facing Travellers in this complex area.

Community development work differs from other work in the Family Support Team in that it works more with groups than with individuals.

Much of the work in this area so far has involved liaison with existing Traveller Community Development groups in addition to initiating community development processes in sites and areas where none had existed previously.

It is hoped that work in this area will provide an opportunity for the learning at ‘coalface’ level to be disseminated at policy level to enable real change to be brought about for the service users of Exchange House.