Fears some children will not return to school after another 'year of chaos'

Aoife Browne of Barnardos, pictured at home in Castletroy, Limerick. Picture: Brian Arthur

There is the girl who has locked herself in her room and is refusing to engage with her family. There is the man who refused two ambulances which called to his house.

There are others as well, families and children whose vulnerability only seems to be increasing as the pandemic continues, according to Aoife Browne, Barnardos Project leader based in Limerick.

"Around 90% of our cases involve mental health," says Aoife. "The challenge with this lockdown in particular is parents who are very upset, feeling isolated. A lot of services are closed or there is online support — that works for some, but not for a lot of the families that we work with.

That has enhanced the addiction issues, the domestic abuse, the mental health piece. Those issues were there previously, but they have been exacerbated."

Aoife, who works from the Limerick South project in Southill which covers parts of the city and county, says she would be "really worried" about the potential long-term impacts on children.

In the midlands, it's a similar story. Deirdre Cahir is Barnardos Project leader in Tullamore, Edenderry, and Portlaoise. Aoife and Deirdre do not know one another, but what is striking is the similarities in the challenges faced by the families they work with. One of those is a "catch-up" level of referrals from schools since they reopened last week, on the back of a 21% rise in referrals to Barnardos services since the pandemic began.

"We definitely have had an increase [in referrals] since schools opened from principals saying they have concerns about a child, they want to refer this family or 'I haven't seen this family'," says Deirdre.

The whole way through [the pandemic] we have had a steady increase in our referrals."

She says school is a stabilising influence in the lives of many children, and that this lockdown has brought up "massive issues" in some homes, such as low literacy levels of parents who have been trying to homeschool their own children, aligned with practical issues such as lack of wifi.

Deirdre also noticed a change in the range of people seeking help over the past year.

"There was no socio-economic divide in who was ringing us," she says. 

In addition to some new clients, "the other thing is people we had worked with five or six, or three or four years ago and felt we had closed our work with them and were flourishing, they were back at square one again."

Aoife has another concern around the amount of missed schooling.

"I can see that some children will not ever go back to school," she says, referring specifically to families in which "attendance was always an issue".

She believes it is something that the Tusla Education Support Service will have to look at, while Deirdre mentions some younger children not meeting educational milestones. 

Both Deirdre and Aoife refer to "Covid fatigue" among some families, as well as an increase in alcohol and drug use and deteriorating mental health at a time when a full range of services are not available. Domestic abuse has also featured.

Both believe services will have to be put in place to deal with the longer-term impacts of a pandemic that has yet to run its course.

It has meant safety-first face-to-face meetings outside houses, the provision of butcher vouchers and food hampers, and  practical support. 

"I have to say it has been a year of chaos, insofar as how we work and support people," says Deirdre. 

"The one good thing is that we were there the whole way through, we always answered the phone.

"There is a sense of 'what is normal now?'."