Govd squadering blamed for disability waiting list

The Government squandering of disability services funding has resulted in the longest waiting list for full-time residential services in a decade, it was claimed today.

As new figures revealed over 2,000 people with intellectual disabilities are awaiting residential services across the country, David Stanton, a Fine Gael TD, said the report showed the Government had failed those with intellectual disabilities.

“The fact that waiting lists have risen to their highest ever level shows that there is a need for reform of the way services are funded to ensure that appropriate services are made available to those who need them,” he said.

Mr Stanton said the Health Research Board’s data was particularly worrying for elderly parents of middle-aged children who have an intellectual disability.

He said: “More money alone is not the answer. There is no doubt that there has been substantial investment in disability services over the past 10 years - though the funding provided at the last budget is actually substantially less than what was actually promised.”

The HRB’s National Intellectual Disability Database (NIDD) Annual Report has shown that 2,270 people with intellectual disability are waiting for residential services.

The report showed demand for full-time residential services for people with intellectual disabilities has reached the highest level in a decade.

Around 2,008 full-time residential places are needed – an increase of 115 since 2004.

Despite recent investment in services, the group also needs 284 day places.

Around 1,840 people who currently do not receive residential support services, will require services between 2006-2010.

Deirdre Carroll, from the National Association for the Mentally Handicapped of Ireland (NAMI), said the €600m promised in the last Budget for intellectual disability services had turned into €200m over the next four years.

She said this would be just enough to keep the current level of service ticking over.

“We have very serious problems in this area, this is the tenth year of the database, which just seems to be going up and up,” Ms Carroll said.

“We really need to have a root and branch look at how we fund disability services.”

Ms Carroll said she believed many elderly parents were putting their children down on the database as they were worried about what would happen to their off-spring when they died.

Steve Barron, research analyst at the Health Research Board, said the demand for services was linked to high birth rates during the 1960s and 1970s has resulted in a large adult population availing of intellectual disability services.

He said people with intellectual disabilities wre also living longer than previously.

“While a further multi-annual funding package has been put in place for the period 2006-2009, it will not meet the service needs identified in this report,” Mr Barron said.

“If the demand for residential services continues to rise at the rate observed in this national dataset over the past two years, only a small proportion of the existing and emerging need in this area will be addressed.”

There are 24,917 people registered on the National Intellectual Disability Database this year – almost 60% have a severe intellectual disability.

However, around 24,078 people, or 97% of people registered on the database, are receiving services – which is the highest level since the database was established in 1995.

There were 323 people that required services who were receiving none.