CKU - Activity

The CKU began operating in 30th May 2009, in the crypt of the church, which was facilitated by the Polish Chaplaincy in Dublin. It was a response to the needs of the Polish people and their families struggling with the problem of addiction, and whose barrier in seeking help was lack of English. Initially it was a pilot project in the field of counselling, consultation and emergency assistance. However, a large number of clients and their expectations for the therapeutic treatment affected in transformation of our project into a professional psychotherapeutic assistance in addiction treatment. Every year the organization has developed and expanded its offer. In 2010, the organization was registered as the Centre for Addiction Counselling- non-profit reg. no.485287, and in February 2012 we received charity statute - CHY 19490. The crucial moment in the development of the organization was meeting in 2010 with Colm Browne, the coordinator of South Inner City Drug Task Force, who became interested in our project and seeing the difficult conditions in which we were working, he arranged a meeting with Paul Conlon – the director of Coolmine Therapeutic Community, who invited us to cooperation, which in 2011 resulted in the relocation of our premises to Coolmine House. At the same time we established cooperation on the merits of working with clients with well- known experts in Poland- with M.D Bohdan T.Woronowicz,who became our supervisor and who directed us in the therapeutic work with addicted clients to interpose with the AA community and to take into account the 12 steps program, M.D Ewą Woydyłło and M.A Grażyną Płachcińską - who still runs the team supervision. Systematic professional development, the activity in expansion of the individual competences, willingness of the members of the therapeutic team to analyse their own work, is critical to maintain a high quality of psychotherapeutic help provided in the CKU. An important objective in the development of the organization is the integration with the local services, agencies and organizations, that can help the client in different areas of his life and in particular in adopting himself to a multicultural Ireland, which enhances his independence and sense of security. Therefore, we organized an integrating seminar in 2011 at the Mansion House in Dublin, which was attended by several local organizations and services, and we joined the National Drug Treatment Reporting System and Health Research Board. At the end of 2013 we decided to change the name and the logo of our organization-CKU- Centre for Counselling and Therapy which followed by expansion of offer to our clients. Moreover, we began to co-operate with CARP-Community Addiction Response Programme Kilinarden, Tallaght. In 2014 our website was highly updated by Przemysław Śliwa who is our administrator. This website provides our clients with better knowledge on how to seek a help.