Two children forced to stay away from school

A REFUSAL by the Department of Education to sanction special-needs assistants for a Kilkenny school has forced two children with a language disorder to stay at home.

As other children finish their third week back at school today, six year-old Shannon O’Dwyer and her four-year-old brother are still at home with their distraught mother. Caroline O’Dwyer gave up her job as an information officer with a local company to fight for the education her children need.

Neither Shannon nor Paul has ever seen a mainstream classroom. Between them, they received just 15 hours’ home tuition last year. Their mother has fought to secure them a place in a local language unit, but to no avail.

Yesterday, the Kilkenny mother got a call from the Department of Education and Science, turning down her request for special-needs assistants for her children, which they need to go to mainstream school. A local primary school agreed to take in the children, if they had the specialist help they needed.

To make matters worse, Shannon’s resource teaching hours were cut from eight to four and Paul will get no help this year. Caroline was in tears yesterday as she struggled to cope with the news. “I haven’t been able to contact the department since September 1. Then I got a call to tell me the children are going to get even less help than last year. There is a language unit at Scoil Mhuire Presentation Convent, Parnell Street, Kilkenny. They need to be there.”

Department rules say children need to be in a mainstream school for a year before attending the language unit but they cannot go to a mainstream school without specialist help.

Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness has been fighting the O’Dwyer case as well as highlighting similar cases for families across Kilkenny and Carlow. “It is now clear that the Departments of Education and Health almost resent the Sinnott judgment and are treating people with inhumanity. It is a clear example of man’s inhumanity to man.”

The Department of Education and Science confirmed that Kilkenny has a Special Language Unit. Applications for places in this unit for the 2003/2004 academic year were accepted up to November 2002 . A spokesperson for the department said it had received a huge volume of requests for specialist help this year and could not sanction every application. As there are generally more applicants than places at the specialist unit, a waiting list applies.

To qualify for placement in the unit, children have to be in a primary school for a minimum of one year and furnish a teacher’s report, psychological assessment and a report from a speech and language therapist.