Parenting education and support and in which the Lifestart Foundation was for many years the sole player is now a more complex and expanding field. In this new climate the Foundation aims:

(1) To sustain and expand programme and service delivery

(2) to inform, support and better target the growth in provision by gathering evidence on need and demand for the Lifestart programme and service in Ireland

(3) to identify obstacles to growth and to develop strategies for addressing those obstacles

(4) to generate highly reliable empirical evidence of programme and service effectiveness, with a view to the consolidation and mainstreaming of the Lifestart programme and service.

The Foundation is currently reaching the parents of 3,330 Irish children, 1 in every 25 live births. It is our ambition by 2013 to have empirically proved that the Lifestart programme works and by 2015 to be in a position to deliver the programme to the families of more than 1 in every 8 new born Irish children, in a pattern of provision which reflects identified need and which makes a significant and lasting contribution to improved child development outcomes in Ireland.