10,000 reasons why we’re not the best little country in world to be a child
THE best little country in the world to be a child, this is. Isn’t that right? Who could possibly disagree?
Well, in some ways maybe it is. It certainly is a great place to be a child if your parents have everything they need. If they can afford the right school, the extra-curricular activities, the visits to the doctor, if they’re ever necessary. If they have the time for you. If they’re happy themselves, there’s a real chance you’ll be happy too.
I was stopped at a traffic lights the other day, a pedestrian crossing. A mum and dad crossed the road in front of me. She was pushing a stroller, with a gorgeous chirpy little girl taking in the world around her. He was holding two boys by the hand — they looked like twins, maybe seven or eight — and the boys were both dressed in sparkling white judo suits. On their way to or from a judo class, with mum and dad and their baby sister to cheer them along.
They looked like a perfect family, and I’m sure they were. They were all engaged with each other, all excited about where they’d been, all looking forward to getting home to tea, and probably bedtime stories. Just seeing them together would make you feel warmer.
I looked at them and thought, isn’t that exactly what it should be like for all our children, for every child living in Ireland.
Because around the same time, as I drew up to the traffic lights, I was listening to Mike Allen of Focus Ireland on the radio talking about families without homes, children they hadn’t been able to find a bed for, mothers and fathers forced to wander from place to place.
He wasn’t in the business of doling out blame — indeed he went to pains to acknowledge the efforts being made by Simon Coveney and the Dublin local authorities — but you could still hear the frustration and passion in his voice at the notion that in Dublin in 2017 there is no room at the inn for up to 30 children. In his frustration, I think he was acknowledging our collective failure to feel a sense of responsibility.
In that one moment, stopped at a traffic light, I was able to see how it is for some kids — hopefully the many — and hear how it is for others, shamefully more than a few.
And it’s tough being a kid as well if you can’t hear, or if you’re having real difficulty expressing your feelings and emotions, or if you’re suffering with things going on in your head. It’s tough beyond tough if you’re a kid, trying to deal with any of these things, and you are on an Irish waiting list.
Emily is a kid we work with in Barnardos (that’s not her real name). When we were gathering data recently about the effect on children of the ever-lengthening waiting lists, the Barnardos team member who works with Emily told us this:
“Emily is two years 10 months old and has been completely deaf for the last 18 months as she is waiting for a basic grommets operation. She has no language at the minute and has no way of communicating. It has affected her speech development as well as her overall social development. It is appalling that the entire window for early development has been missed for the sake of a 15-minute operation.”
Now, here’s the thing about Emily. There is a cast-iron connection between Emily’s deafness now and her family’s income. And there’s a cast-iron connection between Emily’s deafness now and her future development. The little girl who starts behind in school — because she didn’t get grommets — is much more likely to stay behind, to struggle to keep up, and to leave school early. The waiting list for grommets could end up affecting her for the rest of her life.
In Barnardos we published the figures last week. More than 10,000 children on HSE waiting lists for an initial speech and language assessment. 10,000 children more (who eventually got an assessment) waiting for speech and language therapy.
Children who need speech and language therapy have a huge barrier — a mountain-sized barrier — in the way of their development. It affects their ability to communicate, at the most basic level, but it affects their ability to learn, to develop relationships, to manage their emotions. Children waiting for essential therapy can be stigmatised, lonely, frightened.
And there are more than 2,500 children and young people on waiting lists for an initial assessment by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health service (CAMHs). These are children and young people whose well-being is under strain right now. They are kids who are suffering, and need help, right now. But the result of assessment, if it ever happens, is to place you on another waiting list for your first appointment.
From waiting list to waiting list. And it’s not just about family income either. Where you live determines how long you wait. Our figures, for instance, show that it’s really tough being a child who needs help from public services in the Cork and Kerry area, because the waiting lists are longer there than elsewhere.
Of course, kids don’t have a legal right to these supports. Unless, that is, they have a disability. We passed a law back in 2005 that gave children with a disability the right to an assessment of needs (no right to the delivery of services, mind you, but at least a legal right to have their needs assessed).
Under that law – Section 9 (5), if you want to be exact – if a child is born with a disability, and his or her parent applies for an assessment, the HSE must begin that assessment within three months.
The average waiting period, according to our research, is 11 months. There are parts of the country where you could erect banners and flags all around your house proclaiming your child’s disability, and still wait forever.
Here’s the truth of it. Children are unequal. There is nothing – in our constitution, our law, our politics, our public policy, our administration, our bureaucratic systems – to change that.
But what’s even more cruel – and we know this because we learned it in the Dáil – is that it would cost a measly €268 million over five years to hire the professionals to fix these waiting lists. Wouldn’t you think that someone in the political system would be inspired to make it a priority to do something so cheap and so effective?
Every child has potential – in fact children burst with potential. It’s bubbling up constantly. But the lucky kids are the ones without the barriers placed in the way of that potential. The kids who have to climb over barriers, all through their young lives, are the ones who are seeing their potential stolen away.
Most of all it’s about choice. If we chose to make our children equal — all of them — we’d decide that we’re simply not going to allow things to get in the way of their potential. Then we really could call ourselves the best little country in the world to be a child.
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