HSE’s child psychiatric service under fire

DISABILITY groups have said it is “totally unacceptable” that the Health Service Executive cannot provide adequate child psychiatric services because it is spending most of the budget on its statutory obligation to assess all children under the age of five for potential problems.

The Disability Federation of Ireland said that children under the age of five are being given psychological and physical assessments but, once the assessment is complete the service to meet their assessed needs is then not available.

The Inspector of Mental Health Services last week noted that parents of children over the age of five are facing waiting lists of up to two years because the Disability Act made it obligatory that all children under five are assessed.

Disability Federation of Ireland (DFI) chief executive John Dolan said the HSE is “robbing Peter to pay Paul” by diverting money out of service provision and into assessment provision. He also said over-5s can’t be “put on the long finger”.

“It is totally unacceptable and has been an issue among many of our member organisations. A significant increase in funding is necessary if we are to provide services after somebody has been assessed,” said Mr Dolan.

He added that the €50 million annual funding set aside in the National Disability Strategy for residential disability and daycare services has still not been handed over.

“It’s not clear whether it will be deployed this year. There have been suggestions that the HSE might want to use it to balance their overall budget which is already in a deficit. This is really wrong as this money was promised from 2005 onwards,” he said.

Mr Dolan pointed out that TDs in the Dáil vote on how the annual budget is to be used and that “serious questions about accountability and transparency” need to be asked if the HSE is changing its spending plans during the year.

“We have already seen the HSE do this by not spending the palliative care budget and instead diverting it elsewhere. We will not let it happen to disability funding,” he said.

A spokesman for the HSE said that investment in child and adolescent psychiatry was a priority.

“One of the key priorities for 2008 will be to provide eight additional consultant child psychiatry teams together with increasing the inpatient bed capacity from the current 12 to 30,” he said. “This will result in an increase of 150% in child and adolescent patient bed capacity.”