'We’re ready to take the next big jump': After stormy period the Rainbow Club shines

IT has been a rollercoaster ride for the Rainbow Club and its founder Karen O’Mahony since the Cork charity was first established in 2015.

Seven years ago, Karen and her husband Jon set out to provide vital services to children with autism and their families, inspired by their own sons Stephen and Sean, both of whom have autism.

At the time, Karen was told her idea would be difficult to bring to fruition, and that she would receive little or no help from capital funding, the HSE or politicians.

Karen itted that the past few years have been a struggle, trying to help as many children as possible, retain staff and maintain services.

However, the Mahon-based charity and its founders, volunteers and staff stayed strong, and the Rainbow Club now provides vital to almost 1,100 children and their families every single week.

Now, at the end of a hectic 2022, the Rainbow Club is looking to the future with a new optimism having secured two crucial components to ensure the future of the Cork charity — capital funding and their very own premises.

In October, Taoiseach Micheál Martin revealed that a permanent premises for the Rainbow Club had been identified, with the help of the HSE and Cork City Council.

The new premises will mean the Rainbow Club can apply for a wide range of grants and subsidies, now that it has its own, official address.

It will also save the Cork charity a whopping €8,000 a month on renting modular units, money that can be pumped back into services.

It was also recently revealed that the Rainbow Club will receive capital funding to ensure the new premises is fully kitted out with all it will need to continue to provide to children with autism and their families, and to increase that offering.

Speaking to The Echo at the end of another busy year, Karen reflected on how far the Rainbow Club has come in the past seven or so years, from its humble beginnings as a one-room operation in Mahon to finally having a dedicated premises to call home.

“The capital funding and the new premises — it’s huge, it really is,” said Karen. “Over the years, people have told me over and over that we wouldn’t get the engagement from the HSE, we wouldn’t get the capital funding and we wouldn’t build relationships with the government.

“We’ve ticked all those boxes and have built amazing relationships with government, ministers, TDs and local councillors.

“From very early on, we also started a very positive relationship with the HSE because we knew they’d be a big part of our funding here.

“Over the seven years, it has been really hard and emotionally and physically exhausting.

“But it’s great to get that recognition from the Taoiseach, and to have such great advocates like Minister Anne Rabbitte and Michael McGrath, and to have local TDs like Pádraig O’Sullivan and councillors give such over the years to get to this point,” she added.

“The City Council have also been a huge in sourcing new premises for us.

“So it has been really hard, but it’s all been worth it to get to here where we’re ready to take the next big jump and leap forward.

“The capital funding is a huge, huge part of it.

“Without that funding, it would be very difficult to get the new premises ready.

“The fact that we’ve been given the capital funding means we can make sure the new building has everything it needs, the proper facilities to cater for all our children’s needs into the future.” While the club has been told the new premises is in Mahon, they are still awaiting an exact location and move-in date.

“We were hoping to know before now when we might be able to move in but we haven’t heard anything just yet,” said Karen. “We’re hoping to be in as soon as possible really.

“For the past few years, we’ve been unable to secure significant funding because we don’t have our own premises,” she added.

“That has been a big barrier for us. Moving into our own premises will remove that barrier.

“The capital funding will allow us to adapt the new premises and make sure we have everything we need right from the day of opening.

“We’re bursting at the seams here at the moment, we’re at full capacity so we know what we’re doing is working. We want to increase that offering, expand the services further and add even more.”

At present, the Rainbow Club is ing around 1,070 children with autism through a wide range of s, including speech and language therapy, adapted sports, life skills and much, much more.

The charity also provides counselling for parents and those over the age of 18, as well as groups for the siblings of those with autism.

Despite being at full capacity, Karen and her team are already keen to bring in more children and their families. “We could add more children but we just don’t have the space,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important we get into that new premises.

“With the bigger space, we can bring in more families and we can begin to look at bringing in core funding in the long term. That will also allow us to get staff on full-term contracts. Our volunteers are fantastic but you can’t expect to run a service on volunteers alone.

“So, to be able to really feel secure in our future, we’ll aim to have funding available to bring our staff in on a full-time basis and be able to compete with the other jobs that are out there.”

In mid-2022, the Rainbow Club revealed that it was in danger of losing one of its vital services, the teen hub, due to a lack of funds. The Tomar Trust stepped in to make sure that did not happen, while volunteers and staff at the charity also came together to raise funds to ensure its future.

With its own premises, the Rainbow Club now has a greater ability to apply for more grants and , something that Karen hopes will help avoid such scenarios in the future.

“In of our services, we did have concerns due to lack of funding for the future of some like the teen hub,” she said.

“Now that we’ll have our own building and we won’t have to worry about rental costs, we can budget and hopefully not have to worry for the future of services like that.

“Having our own building means we can apply for and access a wide range of funding. That really relies on us having a new home. The future of the Rainbow Club really relies on us getting in there.

“We’re hoping to secure our building, secure our staff full-time and look to the future without worrying.

“It’s also hugely important for our staff, who have been absolutely amazing, because we want them to have that security in their jobs as well.”

Looking to the future, Karen explained that the aim is to provide services to as many children as possible, right here in Cork, and across Ireland through a replication initiative.

“Over the next three years, we’re hoping to increase our offering and bring through an extra 1,000 children,” she said. “We’re getting calls and emails everyday from families looking to attend the Rainbow Club. Once we get our own place and we settle in there, we’ll be working away on replication as well.”

Karen explained that the Rainbow Club has the model in place to children with autism and that they are keen to share it. The Cork charity is keen to find partners from counties across Ireland to facilitate similar clubs in other parts of the country, to ensure no child or their family is left without .

The Rainbow Club also teamed up with the Cork Education & Training Board to provide an accredited autism studies course, which will be open to the public for enrolment in January.

The charity is also looking forward to hosting a major fundraising event in May 2023 in Adare Manor, which will see celebrities arrive from across the globe to play golf in aid of the Rainbow Club.

The event, organised by Irish ers in America, is just one of a number of fundraising efforts the Rainbow Club has planned for next year. “We’re really looking forward to getting back out into the community in 2023, and seeing what the year has in store,” concluded Karen.