The Towards Healing 2011 Annual Report is being launched this week. This report covers the first eleven months of the work of the Catholic Church's Towards Healing Counselling and Support Services. The reason for this unusual period is so that in future our financial year and the calendar year will coincide.

The Company CCSS Limited was incorporated on the 14th January, 2011 and operates as Towards Healing. The Board of Directors held its first meeting on the 1st February, 2011. It elected the officers of the Company, set out elsewhere in this report, and also appointed Michael Lyons as its CEO and Dr. Melissa Darmody as its Clinical Director. All other staff appointments were delegated to the CEO.

The Board was acutely conscious that the Company was established by the Irish Episcopal Conference, Conference of Religious in Ireland and The Irish Missionary Union as a genuine response to the wrongs done to the victims of clerical religious and institutional abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland and, therefore, has as its overriding objective the wellbeing of those victims. To this end, the Board set itself three specific objectives:-

 to achieve, as smooth as possible, the transition of the clients of Faoiseamh which, since 1997, had been providing counselling to survivors of clerical sexual abuse

 to maintain, build on and expand on the services previously provided by Faoiseamh to its clients

 to achieve the foregoing in as efficient and as cost effective a manner as possible.