Funding cuts - We can’t let services be torn apart

The Irish Examiner begins the first day of a two-part investigation today in relation to the cutback in services for “our most vulnerable”.

The Health Service Executive’s cutbacks during the summer caused alarm as respite services were closed down or curtailed throughout the country.

Following a massive brouhaha, the HSE reinstated many of the respite services that had been cut, but families live in fear that the cuts may be reintroduced again. The stories related in today’s articles demonstrate that these services are invaluable not only to the parents and families of those suffering from intellectual disabilities, but also to the sufferers themselves.

The case studies covered today provide a real insight into the plight of families, and the value of the respite care for all concerned.

Stephen Curran provides a heartrending account of life with his sister Lorna, who suffers from autism and ADHD. She constantly demands to be the centre of attention. While he provides a moving account of the family’s need for respite, his story of frustration is really one of love for his sister.

“Lorna also benefits from respite,” he notes. “As it is the only place where she has a few friends.”

There is an old Irish blessing, “may all your troubles be little ones”. Intellectually challenged children are special children in every sense of the word.

People readily understand the love and affection of a parent for a young child. Everybody’s children are special, but those with special needs become extra special, because they always remain as precious and as vulnerable as young children.

Tommy Cronin was born in the 1960s when the services for intellectually challenged children were very primitive. All children were entitled to an education, but putting them into regular schools was unfair on them and the other children. Yet for so long, there were few facilities for children with special needs.

Tommy’s mother tried valiantly to secure proper care for him in the face of some frightening ignorance.

She was repeatedly rebuffed with the explanation that there were no facilities available for such people living outside Dublin. She had to fight to keep her son out of psychiatric hospitals, because that was the only option at the time.

The Brothers of Charity at Bawnmore eventually came to the rescue of the Cronin family, and they kept Tommy on at their wonderful facilities after he reached 18, despite their desperate struggle to get the funding necessary to keep the facilities open and not send the residents home.

Tommy passed away some years before his mother. It must have been heartrending for her, but she did have the solace that other members of her family would not be burdened with her worries after she was gone.

Bawnmore respite house was closed during the summer following the HSE cuts, but it has been re-opened after some of the cuts were reinstated. We should all be aware that elimination of such services threaten to turn the clock back half-a-century.