Lack of school places: 'We were promised the moon and stars – we got stress and struggle'
Karen McGrath and her son Charlie. 'We applied when he was two-and-a-half to over 15 schools in our area and only received one acceptance letter for an early intervention class. We were one of the lucky ones to get an early intervention class.'
Charlie was born almost five years ago while the country was in the grips of the first covid lockdown.
Early on, his mother Karen McGrath, a nurse working in Cork University Hospital (CUH) could see he was struggling with his developmental milestones. “He is five but he’s not where he should be,” she told the this week.
However, despite numerous phone calls and raising her concerns repeatedly, Charlie saw his public health nurse just once between 2020 and 2022.
Faced with public waiting lists of up to five years, Karen’s mother took a financial hit for the family and paid €2,500 for a private multidisciplinary assessment for her grandson. It confirmed Karen’s fears; Charlie met the criteria at two years of age for global developmental delays and autism.
An assessment of need, a legal right of disabled children to an assessment by the HSE of their needs and the services required to meet them, determined that Charlie would need to attend a special class, and receive speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physio.
“We applied when he was two-and-a-half to over 15 schools in our area and only received one acceptance letter for an early intervention class. We were one of the lucky ones to get an early intervention class.”
Karen described her family as “haunted” in having secured a primary school place for Charlie for next year, but he does have to leave his current school. Two of his classmates are still without a school place for next September.
Today, families are gathering to protest in Cork city in a bid to highlight ongoing issues in special education. Upwards of 100 children in Cork are thought to be without a school place for the incoming year.
Karen is among several parents of children with additional needs who plan to join the protest in solidarity but also to raise awareness around the lack of services and therapies children are receiving, and how it impacts their children and their education.
The McGrath family are among many who have written reports detailing the supports their children require as is their legal right. Despite this, Charlie has not received a single therapy session through his local Childrens Disability Network Team (CDNT).
"To date we are still only being offered parents meetings and parents courses," Karen said.
When Charlie is in early intervention, he has "come on leaps and bounds", she explained. "Because he gets the therapies and the time but I was told by the manager of his team that parent courses are all that they are going to offer us, that this is the gold standard, which it is not.”
The HSE website states that individual therapy sessions are what you get through the CDNT, which are not not happening, she added.
Because he is not getting regular access to the therapies and services he needs, Charlie is often out of sorts. "His early intervention class are raising concerns because Charlie can become very behavioural when he is disregulated and he has hurt kids in his class, and he has hurt us at home.
"The school has said that if this behaviour continues, Charlie will not be suitable for an autisim class because he requires one-to-one shadowing and its not sustainable."
Karen hopes the protest this weekend will help to highlight the lack of school places and the lack of services, the impact on families and how it often all goes hand in hand.
"The stress it puts the families under, not only emotionally but mentally, physically and financially as well."
In this newspaper today, Liz Dunphy reports on how a private donation of €200,000 will allow a special school in Cork city to operate physiotherapy services for their students.
St Paul's in Montenotte is one of six schools taking part in a pilot project intended to mark the first phase in restoring vital therapies to special schools. Despite this, the school has opted to use this money to fund vital services that should be in place for its students.
While many mainstream schools are far from flush, its hard to imagine such a generous donation being spent by most on the bare basics to ensure their students are properly accommodated, but yet this is the situation faced by St Paul's. That's not to say mainstream schools are exempt from the impact of waiting lists and backlogs in assessments.
Indeed, the reason why a school place is so important for families of children with additional needs is because often it is the only regular support their children will receive. Both mainstream and special schools are important advocates for their students' needs not only in education but also outside.
For Karen, this runs deeper than just the lack of school places.
"Its the lack of support and lack of services for families as well. If a child gets a school place, that's great but it needs to be suitable but unless we have the support and back-up, then kids regress and their needs change and they are left in a situation where they have an educational place that's unsuitable, like my son."
"He is regressing, not progressing despite all our engagement with the services. It's left to parents to be occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, and physios."
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