‘I just can’t see how I will cope’

BRIDGET LYNCH is 64 years old, widowed since her handicapped daughter Karen was aged four and at the end of her tether.

Karen, who has Down’s Syndrome, with a heart defect and deformed kneecaps which keep her in a wheelchair most of her days, is about to lose her place in a sheltered workshop.

She is one of a number of adults in Co Clare who has completed a rehabilitation training programme but is looking at a bleak future.

Cutbacks in training places mean intellectually disabled adults like 23-year-old Karen will be unable to use their vocational skills training in workshops designed to give them a sense of purpose in a world where exclusion of the handicapped is the norm.

It means Karen is looking at living at home full-time with a mother who is worn out and has her own health problems.

“I just can’t see how I will cope. I have other sons and daughters but only one living near me. I need help with Karen. I’ve already reared five by myself and I’m getting very tired. The only option open to me will be to place her in residential care,” she says.

That’s if she can get residential care. The waiting lists are long and the places getting tighter.

And for Karen’s own peace of mind, Bridget wants her daughter to be able to use the new skills she has learned, such as pottery making and computer literacy.

“I can’t take her out of her training at the Brothers of Charity in Ennis. She really loves that place. If I take her out, she may as well be dead and the other parents in the same situation feel the same way. I know my little girl will go into a serious depression without that service,” she said.