‘Child mental health services not properly funded’
Yesterday, an extraordinary general meeting within the Irish Association of Social Workers decided to write directly to the Health Service Executive (HSE) to outline its concerns.
Its members feel they have been ignored during the implementation of the Mental Health Act and are concerned about a lack of co-ordination on the ground.
The IASW’s committee on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services said nothing was being done to fund the community care teams that are supposed to be dealing with children and adolescents who are at risk.
Last night, the committee’s chairman Declan Coogan said there was no consensus on how the teams are supposed to operate and what roles the various health professions are supposed to play.
“The difficulty is that although at least two social workers have to be involved in these teams, no social workers have been consulted about how it will work.
“There has been no discussion on the social workers’ role in assessment or inpatient treatment.
“We welcome the changes made in the Mental Health Act but if you do not have enough resources and fully resourced teams then it cannot be implemented.”
At the EGM the committee decided to write to the implementation group overseeing the operation of the Mental Health Act and ask for its voice to be heard.
Mr Coogan said its members should have been brought in a lot sooner to speak on behalf of the community care teams.
“Maybe it is an oversight but the Irish Association of Social Workers was established since 1971 so you would think we should have been involved.”
The committee is also concerned about the level of cover provided in the social work sector because there is no out-of-hours service outside Dublin.
“It means that if you have trouble after five on a Friday evening there is no service there to help, it means that the quality of cover is entirely dependent on where you live and that is just not good enough.”
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