Substantially more than 'one or two' people reported negative experience at Cuan Mhuire

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Written by Administrator

Wednesday, 07 February 2007

Dear Editor,

Having been a member of the Homeless Empowerment Action Research Team (HEART), I felt obligated to respond to some of the letters your newspaper has received since the Brenda Carney article (17 January edition) on the HEART project report.
This report was carried out by a number of us who had experienced homelessness and some who were still regarded as being homeless as we were living in voluntary sector housing projects in Galway at the time.

The HEART project was designed to explore people's experiences of the statutory and voluntary services in Galway city with a view to improving the services.

Our team, over a two-year period, undertook all aspects of the research project. This included mapping our own experiences of the services, research design, data collection, data analysis and report writing.

We appointed a group development facilitator, throughout the project, to guide the process of skills and group development.

An independent research specialist was also contracted to provide training in research skills to the HEART team. The training covered all aspects of research skills including ethics, design (survey, secondary data etc.), implementation, analysis, report writing and dissemination of findings. Our research plan included three main elements: (1) literature review, (2) scheduled face-to-face interviews with service users and (3) service providers' questionnaire.

A wide range of policy documents and research documents were sourced and reviewed by the team and these are listed in the reference section of the report.

We received extensive training in interviewing techniques, including the theory and practice of interviewing.

It was decided that, given the time and resources of the team, a maximum of 50 interviews would be carried out. Due to the absence of a sampling frame (in this case a list of all those who have used the homeless services in Galway City), a non-probability sample technique was used in targeting people for interview. Based on the most up-to-date figures of the number of people experiencing homelessness in Galway City, the team worked out the proportions of the sample to come from each service and these are illustrated in page 22 of the report.

The analysis of the interviews consisted of both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The voluntary services looked at in the report are Cope, Galway Simon Community, Threshold, Cuan Mhuire Residential Addiction Centre and statutory services included HSE West, Galway City Council, Social Welfare, Community Welfare and the Citizens Information.

The report was sent out to all local newspapers in Galway and Brenda Carney's article of 17 January was taken directly from the report and didn't just focus on the Cuan Mhuire Addiction Centre, and neither did our report.

As your recent letters have just been in response to the Cuan Mhuire findings, I would like to comment to Mr Emmet Majors and Mr Philip O'Brien's letters, specifically, dated 17 January issue and 31 January respectively.

As Mr Major says in his letter, 'I feel it is inappropriate and unfair to single out and print comments of 'one or two' people who feel that they have been poorly treated in some way' by Cuan Mhuire.

Let me assure Mr Major when the report says that the majority of people interviewed who said they had used this service and having had a negative experience at Cuan Mhuire, it is substantially more than 'one or two'. There are others, as the report says, who spoke about the positive aspects of Cuan Mhuire, the assistance they received in staying sober and the counselling provided.

When Philip O'Brien in his letter (31 January edition) says, 'It is unfortunate that a professional journalist (Brenda Carney) should have relied on 'sources' that have not been verified by the simple request for a visit to Coolarne, where any number of residents will tell one of the truly remarkable transformation in their lives as a result of their stay in Cuan Mhuire in Coolarne'.

He also states: 'what emerges however, is a reference to a highly unrepresentative quote from an anonymous ex-resident'.

I would like to point out here that a senior member of the Cuan Mhuire staff had been contacted by the HEART team to ask their residents if they would like to take part in the survey. The staff member declined the invitation over the phone without first asking the residents. Their justification for declining was that it would interfere with the treatment of the residents. Cuan Mhuire was the only voluntary organisation contacted by the HEART team to decline from taking part in the survey.

The majority of the 20 male individuals interviewed at the Fairgreen Homeless Shelter, for the survey, had been ex-residents of the Cuan Mhuire Treatment Centre.

An independent research authority (Liz Lennon, Focused Solutions) documented the process of the HEART project.

In her evaluation report (page 25), she says: 'I viewed the research training programme as well as the research tools developed by the (HEART) team - with the assistance of the research trainer. The quality of the survey design: pre-test process: sampling methodology and interview training were of a very high standard. As an action researcher myself I did not see any flaws in the training or implementation of the learning in the research process'.

Noel

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