Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has described the\ngovernment\u2019s performance and response on early intervention for children\nwith special needs as abysmal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD raised the issue with the Minister for\nHealth, Simon Harris, in the D\u00e1il this week and told him about a constituent\nwhose child will have to wait 52 months for supports<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe programme for government contains a number of commitments regarding the concept of early intervention for children with special needs and the government is failing abysmally to meet these commitments.<\/p>
\u201cA constituent of mine recently received a letter from the HSE school age team in Dublin South West. This parent was told that it will be 52 months before their child is assessed for supports by the team.<\/p>
\u201c4 years and 4 months makes a nonsense of the idea of early intervention. <\/p>
\u201cChamber House in Tallaght is missing a significant amount of key personnel. They are doing their best, but they lack staff and the waiting lists are getting longer. This understaffing has also made it\u00a0a very unattractive place to work.<\/p>
\u201cI\u00a0called on the Minister to speak to staff in Chamber House and to see how the missing personnel has completely broken the early intervention system.<\/p>
\u201cHow can a\u00a0government say it is committed to early intervention when there is a family in Dublin South West who will have to wait over 4 years for supports for their child. The child has profound needs and is non-verbal. It is a sad case, but I am increasingly seeing similar cases. <\/p>
\u201cThe system is broken and it needs to be urgently fixed by government support and intervention. A first and logical step would be for the Minister to visit the area and\u00a0talk directly\u00a0to frontline staff and a sample of parents waiting years\u00a0for supports for their vulnerable children.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has described the government\u2019s performance and response on early intervention for children with special needs as abysmal. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD raised the issue with the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, in the D\u00e1il this week and told him about a constituent whose child will have to wait 52 months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,26,182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-special-needs","category-waiting-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3963,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962\/revisions\/3963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}