About Us

Our Role

The role of the Centre for Effective Services Ltd is to make available technical and organisational expertise to client organisations that offer support to children and families at community level.  The Centre will fill an internationally recognised gap by connecting the design and implementation of children’s services with scientific and technical knowledge of what works. 

Structure and Funding

The Centre for Effective Services Ltd is a private company registered in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland ( to be included when appropriate) and limited by guarantee.  It is funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, the Office for the Minister for Children and the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.  The board of directors is chaired by Mr Dan Flinter.  Mr Flinter is Chairman of the Governing Authority of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and of the National Sports Campus Development Authority.  He is a former Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Ireland and Forbairt.

Why is a Centre for Effective Services needed?

Through academic research and scientific enquiry, there is an increasing body of evidence that helps practitioners, policy-makers and academics to understand what works in children’s services.  With technical and scientific know-how, this evidence of what works can be applied to design and implement services which are more successful in delivering positive, measurable outcomes for children.  There are many organisations involved in planning, delivering and improving services for children or advocating on their behalf.  These organisations recognise an important current gap in the field of children’s services .  This is the absence of coordinated and appropriate scientific, technical and organisational expertise to support full implementation of evidence-based children’s services. Service providers are using this evidence to build robust design and evaluation into their services but they require the support of scientific, technical or organisational expertise in order to do this successfully.  CES will bridge the gap between technical/ scientific understanding of what works and the practical development and implementation of children’s services in the real world.  With encouragement and investment from both Government and philanthropy, CES will support service providers in accessing expert advice when they need it and assist them in developing the technical, scientific and organisational capacity of the children’s field on the island of Ireland.  

How will the Centre for Effective Services work?

The CES will work with the many individuals, organisations and institutions which play vital roles in the children’s sector across all of Ireland.  It will act as a conduit between the three major stakeholder groups in the field of children’s services  to give improved outcomes for children by promoting and supporting evidence-based practice in an integrated, constructive and practical way.

How was this blueprint for a CES developed?

Through its work in supporting innovation in children’s services in recent years, The Atlantic Philanthropies realised that children’s services could be more successful if they had access to appropriate expertise that would meet their specific needs and help them develop their practice on the basis of ‘what works’.  Following the collaborative launch of the Prevention and Early Intervention Programme for Children (PEIPC) in 2006, the concept of a Centre for Effective Services gained the support of the Office of the Minister for Children.  In July, 2007 Atlantic Philanthropies commissioned a team comprising Prospectus Ltd., strategy consultants, Owen Keenan, Director of Middlequarter and former CEO of Barnardos, and Professor Sharon Ramey, Susan Mayer Professor of Child and Family Studies at Georgetown University) to plan the establishment of a Centre for Effective Services.  The team consulted widely with relevant experts and practitioners in the field of children’s services. This work was completed by the commissioning team by December 2007. The Company was registered and a board of directors appointed in January 2008.  Atlantic Philanthropies has committed a budget of €5.2 million to the project over five years and this will be matched by Irish government funds.

When will the CES begin to function?

The operations of the CES will be rolled out in a phased manner in order to address the following considerations:

• An immediate need to provide expert support to services which are recently launched or ready to launch
• A need to build up expertise in the CES and to ensure that it does not take on more than it has capacity to deal with 
• The likelihood that demand for support will increase from the second year of operation.