The HSE failed to process as many as 2,500 applications from parents to have their children’s needs assessed on foot of a disability — despite a legal requirement to do so within six months.

Reimagine Cork is staging a treasure hunt across the city as part of Heritage Open Day tomorrow, writes Colette Sheridan

Suicide charity Pieta House is taking over services previously operated by Console in a deal finalised yesterday to ensure minimum disruption to clients.

Gardening is a great pursuit to help all aspects of health, not just in terms of aerobic fitness but also mental health. 

Attention, Class! 

Good morning. Here’s everything you need to know before you start your day.

The members of Shine’s Basement Resource Centre in cooperation with Cork City Council are to launch a new mental-health themed pop-up garden at a previously disused site on Cork’s Kyle Street. 

A programme that has been hugely successful in helping people learn about their mental illness and how to cope with it is being rolled out nationally.

Aifric McGlinchey talks to St Vincent de Paul about their work in rural areas. 

MUSIC NEWS:

The budget is a body blow for parents with autistic children.

Autism charity Shine’s chief executive has said three special needs children being taught in a windowless store room at a new €4.2m primary school “are being treated like second-class citizens”.

PEOPLE over the age of 50 are less likely to disclose mental health concerns to their GP, and stigma was the main reason for them not attending mental health services, research has found.

THE founding member of a coalition of suicide charities, the Action on Suicide Alliance, has pulled out of the organisation claiming it now lacks independence and cannot criticise its state funders.

The daughter of Rupert Murdoch will not be joining the board of her father’s News Corporation conglomerate as expected, the company said.

IT has been a miserable week for Roscommon.

THE Garda Síochána is leaving itself “open to repeating” the Abbeylara tragedy by not having formal mental health expertise available to it to deal with barricade incidents.

All-Ireland SFC Quarter-Final

TUTORS and parents at some of the country’s 13 ABA schools for children with autism have raised concerns about Department of Education proposals to give them full special school status, describing it as “the death of ABA schooling in Ireland”.

KIERAN Kennedy, CEO of Shine, autistic spectrum organisation, says (Letters, March 15) “the present situation is only reinforcing exclusion.

POLICE and court diversion systems should be set up to redirect people with serious mental illnesses away from prisons to therapeutic services, campaigners have said.

The Rape Crisis Network Ireland is renewing its call for a full independent inquiry into the Michael Shine affair.

THE NURSE who tried to bring complaints about Drogheda consultant Michael Shine to the attention of the authorities was warned she would lose her home and reputation if she persisted with her action.