Parents protest health care cuts

THE health care needs of severely mentally handicapped children are being neglected because of an over-emphasis on education, their parents have claimed.

Parents of children attending St Vincent’s Development Centre on the Navan Road in Dublin have entered their third week of protest at the reduction of health care services in the centre.

Shay Feehily, secretary of the Parents’ Support group said parents agreed with a Supreme Court ruling in the Sinnott case that “education does not equal teaching” and that health care was “usually the major component of education” for the severe and profoundly disabled.