Greg Daly
The Church’s crisis pregnancy support agency is restructuring its services to meet changing patterns of use, writes Greg Daly
Cura Crisis Pregnancy Support Services has announced the closure of its Kilkenny, Tralee, Ennis, Thurles, Limerick, Athlone and Wexford centres over the coming months. All Cura services, including drop-in services, will from now on be delivered through four main ‘service hubs’ located in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Waterford, where there are ongoing demands for drop-in face-to-face services.
Outreach centres are also to be based in Sligo, Tallaght and the Dundalk/Monaghan area.
Review
Cura’s president Bishop Éamonn Walsh explained that the decision followed a strategic review intended to establish how best Cura could help those who sought its services in an environment very different from that which existed when the agency was established in 1977.
“In today’s world,” Cura’s national coordinator Louise Graham said, Cura’s commitment to immediate service access “means an increased focus on telephone and online presence”.
Trends
Explaining that 79% of Cura clients last year were under 35 years old, Ms Graham said the review had focused on trends in clients’ access to and take-up of services.
Website visits have increased exponentially, she said, rising from 10,563 in 2013 to 26,342 in 2015. By far the single greatest referral source for new Cura clients is the internet, with 41% of clients first encountering the service that way, as compared to just 10% from GPs.
“Similarly,” she said, “there has been a relative increase in incoming calls to our national helpline, with a 33% increase in call volume in 2015 when compared with the 1,200 calls received in 2014.”
In contrast, she said, between 2011 and 2015, there was a 25% drop in face-to-face client contacts.
“These changing trends in accessibility, and in the take up of services, have informed the design of the new Cura structure,” Bishop Walsh said. While Cura support services have helped thousands of women experiencing crisis pregnancies, doing so in a sensitive and professional manner while remaining true to Cura’s Catholic ethos and values, he said the announcement showed the agency’s continued “commitment to continue to evolve to care for our clients’ needs”, in recognition of how “we do so in a radically different Ireland from where we set out”.
Cura can be contacted by email at curacares@cura.ie, on
www.cura.ie and through the helpline 1850 622 626.