Union raises concerns over lack of engagement on therapists for special schools

Minister Anne Rabbitte: High-profile international recruitment campaign  to get under way shortly.  Picture: Eamon Ward

The union representing the majority of health and social care support therapists in special schools is writing to Minister Anne Rabbitte to raise concerns about a lack of engagement about the reinstatement of 220 positions in schools.

Ms Rabbitte, who has responsibility for disability, announced on Friday that a process has been commenced by the HSE to reinstate such therapists in schools that previously had them. The roles include physiotherapists, and speech and language therapists.

The initial decision to remove them from schools was made to allow for the roll out of the new Progressing Disability Services plan, which was set to reorganise access to clinical disability services for children. 

However, Ms Rabbitte said on Friday that the reinstatement decision was made after listening “to the ongoing concerns of parents of children with complex needs who attend special schools”.

Linda Kelly, national secretary of the Forsa trade union with responsibility for health and social care professionals, said that the union will be writing to Ms Rabbitte on Monday to highlight that there has not been engagement with staff on the proposals.

“From the top of the service down to the provision of the service, to the families, there are issues, and the HSE needs to get realistic about tackling them and they need to engage with FORSA. We represent the majority of the staff who provide this service,” she said.

She pointed out that there are staffing issues within the service.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

While accepting that the HSE had advised Forsa of the Government decision on the reinstatement, no proposals had been provided to the union on how it will be implemented.

“Before this came out, we had already written to them (the HSE) to outline our serious concerns about the service. There are massive concerns from our members on the ground.

"There is an absolute staff shortage — the idea that they are going to be able to put in 140 whole time equivalents is not realistic and staff on the ground are already totally under-resourced to be able to provide a service and they are telling me that there is no capacity in the services to be able to implement this Government decision.” 

She stressed that everyone wants to see the Government decision implemented.

But she added: “The HSE and the minister are playing a very disingenuous game with the public of making these statements without any consultation with the staff, without any serious discussion about implementation and it puts the families in a terrible position where they are hearing about these good news stories from the media but actually they are not going to see these services realised for their children in any sort of immediate time frame.” 

On Friday, Ms Rabbitte said that the HSE plan around the latest decision included the reassigning of existing HSE staff to fill a third of the roles this month, with a further one third to be filled from existing panels and further reassignment through this autumn.

She said that other initiatives, including a high-profile international recruitment campaign would get under way immediately.