Letters to the Editor: Shameful saga of child mental health issues
'Families are failed, clinical staff are overwhelmed and demoralised, while the HSE reneges on its statutory duty of care.' Picture: iStock
Niamh Griffin illuminates, yet again, the paucity of appropriate service supports for children and families living with complex developmental delay and emotional/behavioural issues — Over-prescribing sees ‘children shutting down', Irish Examiner, October 28.
This shameful saga has been running now for an age and shows little sign of improving. There are, of course, several strands to the ongoing stagnant state of play.
HSE ineptitude, obfuscation, and regular reflex, makeshift short-termism is a key culprit. Having hatched and launched the current children’s disability network team (CDNT) template of service delivery five years ago, (and this after an already five years of supposed dedicated scoping, planning, and framing, all with dubious aplomb and faux optimism), the resulting denouement is a disaster, going from bad to worse.
Regular resignations of managers of already sparsely staffed clinical teams, incessant fiddling with varying operational schemata, and promotion of middle-managers up the career line who simply don’t have the appropriate maturity or experience, all coalesce to distil a motley brew of chaotic angst, innate vulnerability, and fatalistic dynamic across the board.
Families are failed, clinical staff are overwhelmed and demoralised, while the HSE reneges on its statutory duty of care. What an appalling mess.
With great razzmatazz, Micheál Martin recently launched yet another disability policy “lexicon” which will inevitably dwindle away half-baked, moth-eaten on the pyre of the many erstwhile voluminous reports and policy documents of yesteryear.
Griffin also highlights the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) staffing shortage in Cork and Kerry, which only scratches the surface of that troubled aspect of care.
Given the recent history of Camhs in Kerry, one wouldn’t be rushing to depend on its input to the fray. One would have to question why the biomedical dominance in service response still holds sway. There are many other valuable, creative psychological and psychotherapeutic interventions that could be mustered to offer an extended range of therapeutic approaches bespoke to idiosyncratically varied scenarios.
But such is the “governing” control of the biomedical model, these are rarely invoked or harnessed.
Big Pharma ensures permanence of the hierarchy. After all, business is business, and bottom-line career patch protection is at stake.
Perhaps Bernard Gloster in this swan-song year of his HSE CEO-ship could strike a coherent blow for authentic empathy, honest endeavour, and comprehensive delivery of a disability service appropriate to need. Surely that’s the least the HSE can do for those enduring a life of relentless torture and harrowing challenge.
The decision by the Aquaculture Licences Appeals Board (Alab) and the continued inaction of the Government to protect our wild salmon and sea trout is a national disgrace — Salmon farm go-ahead slammed, Irish Examiner, November 1.
The salmon farming industry has done huge damage to our wild stocks, provides few jobs, is little benefit to the exchequer, and damages tourism. The value to the tourist industry of a rod caught wild salmon is multiples of that of a farmed fish.
Ireland is no longer seen as a destination for international salmon anglers. The almost complete collapse of salmon populations in the last few decades is shocking.
The salmon aquaculture industry has played a huge role in this decline. Without immediate action, it is thought that the wild Irish salmon will be extinct within 25 years. We have a duty of care to protect these fish and their environment.
I urge minister Martin Heydon to do whatever is necessary to save the wild Irish salmon, to ignore short-term political gain, and be the first in his position to take decisive and effective action.
In 1975, 215,000 salmon were taken in nets in the Cork district board area, essentially from Ballycotton to Skibbereen. Many, many more were taken by rods and possibly in below-the-radar nets. Our salmon population was in rude health.
In 2005, the national catch for all methods was 259,475 — not too dissimilar to the 1975 figure taken in the Cork nets. Nevertheless, a marked decline over three decades.
The national catch by all methods for 2024 shows that implosion continues and may even be accelerating. It was a tragic 11,217 fish — around 5% of the Cork nets’ catch in 1975.
By our indifference — pollution, nitrates derogations, the absence of real policing off our coasts, feeble policing of sales of wild salmon and salmon farming — we are quickly driving this magnificent species towards extinction.
If we are to do anything that might save this cornerstone species, there is not a moment to lose. What a shameful legacy for tomorrow’s world.
I have to commend the Offaly county board in passing a motion asking the GAA to begin the process of ending all commercial involvement with Allianz Insurance.
The motion was brought by the Ferbane Club to Croke Park to end the GAA’s association with the insurance company after it was listed in a UN report as among the companies and corporations involved in sustaining and paying for Israel’s actions in the Palestinian territories. Allianz is a significant GAA sponsor.
It’s been the title sponsor of the National League since 1993, and is one of the three main sponsors of the football championship.
I applaud Ferbane GAA and the Offaly county board in a taking this moral stance.
The various political parties that supported Catherine Connolly’s campaign for the presidency are now claiming credit for her success. Sinn Féin, as the largest party, is claiming the lion’s share — that its support turned out to be the game-changer promised by its leader Mary Lou McDonald.
All this is fair enough, and I don’t want to take from any of the parties basking in the reflected glory, but I think the unique selling point in this election was Catherine Connolly/url] herself and the campaign she ran since August.
Many of the 15,000 volunteers, like myself, who worked on the ground for the Independent candidate are not members of any political party. We were just members of the public who were attracted to Connolly’s campaign, which was quite unique in many respects.
One unique aspect was the candidate’s insistence on giving parity to both Irish and English in all her election communications.
I don’t think this has ever been done before by any political party in the history of the State. The prominence given to Irish, and its resonance with young people, appears to have taken politicians and commentators by surprise.
The various political parties can claim whatever credit they like, but the key to this successful campaign was Connolly herself and the volunteers on the ground who were attracted to her cause.
You might be able to buy support from professional media advisers, but you can’t buy the support of volunteers who are attracted to the authenticity they saw in Connolly.
She came from rank outsider in August to being the president elected with the greatest number and percentage of votes in the history of the State.
Comhghairdeas léi.
On Saturday, November 1, the Republic of Maldives became the first country in the world to introduce a generational ban on smoking, so anyone born in or after 2007 will be protected from the harmful effects of tobacco products. It has a population of just over a 500,000, but that has not stopped it being a world leader in health protection.
Hopefully, other nations can see the wisdom of the measure, and take up the courage to follow suit.
If experiences elsewhere, particularly that of New Zealand, are anything to go by, it will not be a trouble-free journey. Big tobacco convinced their incoming government to scrap its recently passed legislation, which was similar to that of the Maldives.
Perhaps we in Ireland might take up the baton from the Maldivians and ignore any negative, malevolent statements and inducements that might come from big tobacco.
