Crosscare: Demand for Teen Counselling services too massive to cope with
Crosscare, a social support agency, has warned that the massive demand for its five teen counselling services across Dublin over the past year has resulted in a three to four month wait for support.
Mary Forrest, Clinical Director of Teen Counselling at Crosscare, said: “If a person is calling with a teenager with depression or self-harm (a four month wait) is too long.”
Father Michael Cullen, Crosscare’s director, said it was hard with only its five centres offering free teen counselling to all of Dublin.
Crosscare urged the Government to establish a teen counselling service in every community care area in Dublin.
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, who launched the report, said teenage suicide was now a sad reality in our society.
The annual report showed that 393 families used the Teen Counselling services during the year with 243 new cases. In many instances the services were used by teenagers coping with family deaths, parents’ separation, drugs, delinquency and depression.
Fr Cullen warned that the agency’s services had seen an increase in the number of people from accession countries such as Poland and Lithuania needing urgent care.
He said the centres were so concerned at the increase that they have commissioned a study to investigate the problems immigrants are facing in Ireland just a year after accession to the EU.
“The ingredients that were present in the 1950s in England for Irish emigrants are present in Ireland. We cannot allow prejudice, injustice, exploitation, hunger, alcoholism and homelessness to be their lot,” the director added.
Dr Martin said that immigrants were coming to our shores believing the streets to be “paved with gold“.
“We are not predicting (problems) are going to happen but we should be preparing for the future,” he added. He said the study would inform policy on the matter.
The two emergency accommodation centres at Longford Lane and Dun Laoghaire, which provide 42 beds a night for many turned away by other centres, had an 85% occupancy rate in 2004.
The report found local authority housing for single men was a scarce commodity and there was a severe lack of specialised services for those in need of mental health support.
Last year the centre’s two emergency beds for teenagers at Dublin’s Eccles Street were used by 57 young people.
Crosscare had intended to stop offering the two emergency beds but it said a lack of sufficient alternative services meant they could not withdraw the beds.
