Griffith College Opens its Doors at its New City Centre Campus

From its beginnings in the early 1970's around it’s (now) President’s family dining room table, Griffith College has occupied many different facilities, both in Ireland and across the globe. Its latest development is Griffith College City Centre, a new premises in the heart of Dublin city.

The purpose of Griffith College City Centre is to provide a central educational option to students who work or live in Dublin or its environs. It offers popular courses currently available in Griffith College’s other Campuses and has developed some courses of its own.  Over time it plans to further develop its range of full and part-time courses.

Child Protection Courses at Griffith College City Centre

Griffith College City Centre currently runs a range of evening classes – ACCA, IATI, BA in Accounting and Finance, and BA in Business Studies.  From September 2020 it will run a Masters in Computing Science and a range of Engineering and Manufacturing courses validated by B Tec.  Griffith College City Centre has also developed two exciting short course series’:

• CLICK – Creative Learning, Innovation, Communication and Knowledge

These are stimulating Personal Development courses designed to help people grow in their employment, communicate productively and deal with stress.

• Children First and Vulnerable Persons Safeguarding Training

These courses are based on Tusla’s Children First course, with further enhanced learning experiences from international best practices.  We have provided these courses to a mixed range of student profiles: childcare professionals; English language school staff; and employees from an International NGO.

Both of these courses have achieved excellent feedback from students and the team are confident that these courses will continue to thrive over the summer of 2019 and in the Academic Year 2019/2020.

The facilities have 13 well-appointed classrooms, and a modern computer laboratory, equipped for 30 students. There is a self-service canteen and break out areas for relaxation purposes between classes. Wolfe Tone Square, an urban beach with a magnificent bovine sculpture Ag Crú na Gréine (Milking the Sun) by Jackie McKenna, is a perfect place to enjoy lunch on a nice summers day.

A Prime Location for Students

Griffith College City Centre is located in 25 Wolfe Tone Street, Dublin 1.  It is a mere three minutes’ walk from Arnotts Department Store in Henry Street, five minutes’ walk from O’Connell Street.  It is conveniently located, a four-minute walk, from both the Red (Jervis stop) and Green (Parnell stop) Luas lines.  There are facilities for locking bicycles in a sheltered porch to the front of the building, and also a Dublin bikes station on the doorstep.

From August 2019 Griffith College City Centre will organise open days and open evenings in tandem with the Griffith College open day schedule.  All potential students are welcome to drop in on those days, or alternatively by appointment.

The Courses on Offer

Between the financial demands of the modern world, and the fear of stalling hard-earned career trajectories, families often feel that they have no alternative but to outsource the care and development of their precious children/vulnerable adults to external caregivers.  The old adage “it takes a village to raise a child” has never been truer.

In today’s world, it is unusual to see children playing out of doors in an unstructured unsupervised setting. Children participate in organised ‘play dates’, in clubs and societies, and during the summer months a variety of camps covering sports, arts, language, computers etc.

The age of innocence is gone.  Abuse scandals in various state, commercial and voluntary bodies have brought the protection of child and vulnerable persons to the forefront of people’s minds.  As a society, we have never been more conscious of the need to protect the vulnerable amongst us.

In order to safeguard the protection of such vulnerable persons, legislation in the form of the Children First Act 2015, and guidelines in the form of the Children First: National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children, and Safeguarding Vulnerable Persons at Risk of Abuse - National Policy and Procedures, have been put in place.  The Children First Act also puts an onus on organisations to nominate a Mandated Person to report child protection concerns at or above a defined threshold to Tusla.

In order to navigate individuals and organisations around their responsibilities under legislation, what signs to look out for, and how to carry out Mandated Person responsibilities, Griffith College City Centre has created a series of one day courses under the Child/Vulnerable Persons banner as follows:

• Children First and Vulnerable Persons Safeguarding Training
• Children First and Vulnerable Persons Safeguarding Training (with particular emphasis on safeguarding within sports and leisure clubs/organisations)
• Children First and Vulnerable Persons Safeguarding Training for Mandated/Designated Liaison Persons

These courses have been delivered since early 2019, achieving excellent student feedback from all sources.

In order to cater for the requirements of national summer camp organisers, the team has scheduled courses as follows:

For further information, please click on the appropriate link here Children First, or here Mandated Persons or phone Griffith College City Centre at 01 4150443.