Staffing issue stymies pilot scheme for disability therapy

Fórsa trade union has said recruitment must take place rather than the redeployment of therapists from already understaffed Child Disability Network Teams to staff a pilot scheme to restore therapists to special schools.

The pilot scheme to restore therapists to special schools was announced in early August to restore therapists to six special schools, including four from Cork, in its first phase.

However, none of the schools included in the scheme have yet seen a therapist on site as part of the scheme.

The Cork schools included in the scheme are St. Paul’s Special School in Montenotte, Our Lady of Good Counsel Special School in Ballincollig, Rochestown Special School and Carrigaline Community Special School.

It has now come to light, however, that staffing is the central issue blocking the restoration of therapists to the schools included in the pilot and that Disability Minister is at loggerheads with the union representing the therapists on the CDNT teams in Cork and Dublin.

While part of the issue blocking the roll out of the scheme was an apparent reluctance of the HSE to implement the restoration of therapists, a unilateral decision by the newly appointed HSE Regional Executive Officer in the South West region (CHO4), Andy Philips, who wrote to a Fianna Fáil TD last week advising him that €40,000 in interim funding had been allocated for interim funding to St Killian’s Special School to allow it secure the services of therapists from a company in the private sector, was praised highly by Disability Minister Anne Rabbitte during a meeting last week of the Oireachtas Committee for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. Minister Rabbitte said Mr Phillips deserved ‘high credit’ for his allocation of funding to allow the restoration of therapists to that school which isn’t among the six schools in the first phase of the scheme.

Ms Rabbitte added: “Another part of the frustration which mightn’t be known to the public, and I’m two years battling this one, Fórsa have a role to play in that and, in two of the schools, while there may be some co-operation, there isn’t full co-operation with Fórsa allowing the permission for the agreement of their members to operationalize the decision of Government for therapists to back into schools.

“I say that as a Minister, and I don’t say this proudly, it is highly frustrating, to do a job for our most vulnerable and we as a Government secured funding, we give it to the HSE to operationalise it and then there is a full stop put behind it.

“Parents don’t want barriers, parents want delivery, parents want to see their children receive a service and it is really disingenuous to know.

“I think it is important, Chair, if you don’t mind me telling the truth of some of our barriers in to trying to operationalise the delivery of service, there are two schools in Cork where Fórsa is preventing the delivery of therapies into those schools.” 

For the union representing the therapists, the issue is that the HSE is looking to redeploy staff, even though there is significant understaffing issue as it stands, into this pilot. “This is essentially a smash and grab from the Minister to try and rob Peter to pay Paul,” said Linda Kelly, the Fórsa official who’s representing the therapists.

“This approach does a complete disservice to the staff who are trying to provide a service in already difficult circumstances.

“There is no principled objection from Fórsa to the pilot, we simply want the HSE to recruit directly to the pilot, which I understand in some areas they are now doing.

Ms. Kelly said other issues about the pilot such as scope of practise for CDNT therapists could be worked through. “Members are sick of political priorities interfering with service provision. If the Minister wants a pilot, then recruit to it,” she said. “The Minister will have her answer on the pilot when the results of the recruitment campaign come in.

“What we indicated to the HSE is that they should recruit directly for the pilot and they refused to do that.

“In those circumstances, we will not stand over the redeploying of staff from CDNTs to the pilot.

“This issue completely comes down to the Minister’s lack of engagement about what the issues are for CDNTs but it also comes down to there being different political priorities every week and no clear planning around the issues that are actually live for staff on CDNT teams.

“I have written many times to the Minister about various issues and she has refused to respond to the members working on the frontline of disability services.” Ten additional schools are to be added to the six already on the pilot scheme by the end of this month, the Minister has said during debates on the matter in the Dáil.