Irish Teacher: Helping vulnerable families isn't the sole responsibility of philanthropists

Children with additional needs are being left behind by the state, especially during the summer months

On the surface, charity is good. But surfaces sometimes conceal something rotten underneath.

For philosopher Professor Neil Levy, charity is self-defeating when it allows the state to escape its responsibilities.

“To the extent that private funding of essential services becomes the norm, the vulnerable become the recipients of — at best — uncertain aid, which is liable to fluctuations and constant reduction.”

He could be talking about Ireland. We’re a giving people, generous to a fault. But this most beautiful aspect of our culture is perhaps also the most rotten. Living abroad I saw it often; watched people from other cultures count their pennies, whilst we Irish threw down whatever came up from our pockets.

And don’t we love to settle down to watch The Late Late Toy Showevery year? And don’t we all give generously? We give where the state doesn’t. It’s lovely and it’s admirable, yes, but it’s also not good enough.

In this week’s column, my last of the year, and the third in a series on special educational needs, I’d like to compare two initiatives that relate to vulnerable children.

The first is philanthropic, running on Toy Show funds, topped up by Revolut co-founder Vlad Yatsenko, who visits the National College of
Ireland today, to see the work being carried out.

Thanks to such funding, the Early Learning Initiative (ELI) is running a pilot programme that specifically supports children with disabilities or additional needs. The need for this service was clear to ELI from its existing work with parents in Dublin’s docklands, running early intervention programmes for families. They start pre-birth.

Home visitors model “best practice” play and chat and they bridge the educational gap that can often happen because there’s so much need in a home, and so little time and resources, or where a new parent hasn’t really been parented themselves.

Dr Josephine Bleach, Director of the Early Learning Initiative at NCI highlights the impact of the pilot: “Children are waiting years for
assessments. They are starting schools, and schools don’t have any picture of the child. We arrange it so that parents are getting support while they wait. We start therapies, provide online support, and help parents become part of communities. We know that little things can make a big difference. So, we teach families basic strategies. We give them the language to use when they finally get seen by state services so that they can easily express their child’s needs.”

Small changes are key. “We model the right atmosphere for parents. Everyone sits on cushions, at the children’s level, we avoid excessive hand gestures, bright lights, talking too much. Some children need more time and space to process.”

July Provision is the state’s answer to supporting children with additional needs when schools close. To read department announcements, one might assume there’s an endless supply of professionals to work over the long weeks of summer, 13 weeks at post-primary.

In truth, the provision available is minimal, largely because the much-needed staff want nothing to do with it. SNAs are paid only €16.77/hour if appointed pre-2011 and just €15.50/hour for SNAs employed after -— 40% of teachers’ rates for the same job. Expenses aren’t paid, travel costs can be significant and payment takes months to process. These SNAs also waited until last week to find out if they have jobs next September.

Too often in our state system, supports for children with needs exist only on paper. Politicians depict schools as having resources they don’t have. Indeed, the cart is so frequently pushed before the horse, it’s as if politicians hallucinate the cart moving of its own accord, as if teachers and SNAs are no longer necessary.

When nobody turns up to support these vulnerable children every summer, of course, parents and families are angry. The empty space in their homes comes on top of waiting lists and endless paperwork. Without the full picture, they blame schools. And the impact of that soured relationship is immeasurable.

The philanthropic initiative in Dublin’s docklands could be the future of special education in Ireland if we have the vision and indeed the will, to enact it. Families of children with additional needs need year-long, wrap-around supports, and the earlier they get them, the better and the cheaper it will be for the state, and everyone else.

Charity should only ever be an add-on. When it’s everything, we should all worry.