Clinic boss challenges HSE plans for child disability services

A HSE plan to restructure children’s disability services nationwide, modelled on its work in the Mid-West, has been challenged by the head of a free therapy centre, which is receiving referral requests for children living over 240km away.

Clare Crusaders Children’s Clinic provides free speech and language therapy and specialist treatment such as occupational therapy to more than 350 children with special needs in Co Clare, as many families say they are waiting too long for public appointments. The clinic’s managing director, Ann Norton, pointed to growing waiting lists in the Mid-West and said that the number of Clare children with special needs attending the centre has jumped from 240 to 400 in the last year.

Ms Norton, who was recently elected as a county councillor, has also revealed the clinic is now getting referral requests from parents of children with special needs living over 240km away, on the other side of the country.

“I am now getting phone calls from parents looking for therapy living in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Louth because they have heard of the services the clinic is providing. They want to know can they travel to the clinic with their children. Whatever chance we have of providing Clare children with basic services, it wouldn’t be viable if we expanded.

“Clare Crusaders wouldn’t be in existence if there was a proper service in this county. To think the HSE are going to roll this out across the country is the biggest joke ever.

“Anyone can come down and look at our pilot programme, it is self-funded and is working at a cost of €225,000 a year,” she said.

In total, some 15,776 children with special needs were on the waiting list last year just to gain access to an initial assessment by a therapist, according to information obtained by Fianna Fáil TD Colm Keaveney earlier this year.

Some 1,639 children were on a HSE waiting list for more than 12 months before being able to avail of the service, while close to 3,400 children were left on the waiting list for up to eight months.

Experts say the assessments are a vital support for children in need of speech, language, occupational and physio therapies

In an effort to address the issue of waiting lists and ensure that services are delivered in as equitable a manner as possible within available resources, the HSE said it has introduced a number of initiatives, such as therapists increasing clinic-based work instead of domiciliary work and providing family-centred interventions in a group as opposed to a one-to-one setting, whenever possible.

“In the longer term the reconfiguration of children’s disability services into geographically-based early-intervention and school-aged teams as part of the Progressing Disability Services for Children and Young People Programme will ensure an equitable delivery of services.

“The purpose of the reconfiguration of existing therapy resources is to ensure that the resources available are used to best effect, in order to provide health supports and ongoing therapy to all children (0-18 years) in line with their prioritised needs,” the HSE stated.

The HSE said the targeted investment of €14m would help hire an extra 80 additional therapy staff to increase services for children with all disabilities, including autism.