About us

Safer Children,
Stronger Families,
Healthier Communities

Childhood Matters is a not-for-profit organisation (Registered Charity Number: 20004644) that provides child and family services aimed at supporting and promoting positive childhood outcomes, developing and understanding parenting capacity, building overall family resilience, and contributing to healthier and more sustainable communities.

Our services are based on a fundamental appreciation of individual differences in life experience, and we are committed to using a relational model of working that aims to understand and respect the wide diversity of people we work with in order for positive change and development to be achieved where it needed.

Through principles of strengths based learning, child psychological development, trauma informed care, infant mental health and parenting development our clinical and family support teams provide high quality tailored interventions to encourage clients to be and do the best they can.

Furthermore, it is our strongly held belief that strong communities lead to strong families and to this effect we contribute to community development initiative locally in Cork City to improve social cohesion, inclusion, sustainability and provide platforms through which family support benefits can be actualised.

Every year Childhood Matters engages with over 1000 children locally and nationally to provide high quality early years and family support services.

Learn More about our award winning Early Years services available to children throughout Cork City via Childhood Matters Creche.

Our Values

We hold a strong passion and desire to make a worthwhile impact in the lives of those we work with.

Respect

We treat others the way we wish to be treated ourselves. We understand the different paths lives take and the rich diversity among us in society. We engage with colleagues and clients with humility, respect and without judgment. We understand that all we work with and for are individual human beings and we respect their views and opinions.

Transparency

Healthy relationships rely on honesty and trust. We conduct our business openly and conform to ethical and legal standards. We endeavour to overcome challenges with integrity and we learn from both our successes and our failures.

Equality

We believe in fair and equal treatment and opportunity for our clients, our staff and our partners. We enable and expect staff to operate in a fair, open and inclusive way. Our services reflect the communities we serve and we welcome the strength that comes from diversity.

Achievement

We are proud of our reputation as a person-centred and trustworthy organisation that puts service and excellence at the heart of its business. Continuous improvement is part of everyone’s job; client satisfaction is everyone’s responsibility. We support staff development and recognise their achievements.

Teamwork

We work as a team to do the right thing; our success is based on working together with our clients. Our most valuable asset is our staff – what they do and how they behave makes a big difference to lives of the people in our care and their families. Each member of staff is valued for his or her unique contribution.

Meet our Executive Team:

Dr Calem De Búrca

CEO

CDeBurca@childhood-matters.ie

Lee Dempsey

Finance and Operations Manager

ldempsey@childhood-matters.ie

Gary O’Brien

Compliance and Communications Officer

garyobrien@childhood-matters.ie

Childhood Matter’s Board of Directors is chaired by Mr John Minihan and includes Sr Lorna Walsh, Sr Nora Emperor, Mr Andrew McCarthy & Ms Helen Finucane

Safer Children, Stronger Families, Healthier Communities