Mentally handicapped will suffer

GOVERNMENT cutbacks hit a new low yesterday as it emerged that services and money for the mentally handicapped will be severely cut next year.

Instead of the €38m allocated this year, the Government has allocated just €13.3m next year. No new care places will be funded next year.

Experts working with the mentally handicapped condemned the cuts, saying they would precipitate a

crisis.

The Federation of Voluntary Bodies, an umbrella association for organisations working on behalf of the mentally handicapped, condemned the cuts as ‘disastrous.’

“It means no inroads at all will be made to waiting lists which are still massively high. Worse again, there will be no money for emergency placements, so what will happen to clients whose parents or carers die?” asked federation chief executive Brian O’Donnell.

There are currently 1,711 people with intellectual disabilities on a waiting list for full-time residential care; 861 in need of a day service; 1,014 in need of respite care and 462 people with no service and 485 inappropriately detained in psychiatric institutions.

St Michael’s House in Dublin is typical of the institutions struggling to cope with inadequate funding. It has one of the longest waiting lists in the country, with 344 clients awaiting residential care.

Chief executive of St Michael’s House, Paul Ledwidge, is already tackling a crisis of trying to place clients orphaned by the death of parents. Respite beds are currently allocated to emergency clients, clogging up the respite services normally used to give a break to families engaged in constant care.

Director of services for the Daughters of Charity, Walter Freyne, is under pressure to meet running costs, with a doubling in insurance fees and the need to upgrade existing facilities to meet aging clients’ needs.

Minister Micheál Martin acknowledged there is more to be done in improving disability services, but said this is “a tight fiscal year”. He pointed out there has been significant investment over the past three years in 2,000 extra day care places; 950 residential places and 360 respite places.

However NAMHI, the national association for the mentally handicapped, said next year’s cutbacks would undo the progress of the last three years.

“Any inroads made to waiting lists will soon be eroded. We will be back to the days of the mid 1990s when the huge backlog of need caused terrible hardship for families, many of them with elderly parents trying to cope alone with their adult children,” Ms Carroll said.

She said parents could now be forced into public protest to secure their children’s rights.

“I don’t see any other way.

“If 10 health boards have to share €13.3 million, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of money for individual health boards.