Specialist therapists set to be restored to a number of Cork schools in the New Year

Pupils, parents and teachers and the wider communities of a number of Cork’s special schools can look forward to a brighter 2025, after a successful campaign initiated by a northside school to restore therapists withdrawn from the schools in 2020.

The expectation is that speech and language and occupational therapists will be back in the schools dealing with the most vulnerable children who have been left without therapy since early in 2020, leading to years of missed opportunities and delayed development, by the end of January.

Issues caused by the lack of therapists had been a cause of distress for school communities since they were withdrawn, to be replaced by a scheme known as Progressing Disability Services. PDS was intended to widen the remit of therapists so they could go to pupils with special needs in their homes, no matter what school they were attending, but failed to deliver on that mission, and the issue hit the headlines during the summer.

Pilot scheme 

Then it was brought to light that an application by St Killian’s Special School for a pilot scheme which would see the therapists restored to their school had been considered by the Cabinet. 

This request followed a meeting the school principal, Sue Lenihan, and parents had with then disability minister, Anne Rabbitte, the previous November, at which they were promised interim funding to pay for a private company to provide therapy until a replacement scheme for PDS to restore therapists to special schools across the country could be implemented.

The outcome of the Cabinet’s consideration, however, was that in August a pilot scheme was established for the restoration of therapists to six special schools, four in Cork and two in Dublin. St Killian’s Special School was not included in the pilot scheme.

At a protest held at the school gates at the end of August, just before term was supposed to begin, parents, teachers and children came out in force to express their disappointment and frustration over their exclusion from the scheme.

Catastrophic

At that protest, Ms Lenihan spoke about the impact the lack of therapists for the children was having, describing it as “signficant”.

“It’s catastrophic to review the children who have received no therapeutic intervention over the past five years and the damage that is being done, day-on-day, week-on-week, month-on-month and, in some cases for our children, year-on-year,” she said.

“They are not reaching their full potential, they are entitled to this, they deserve this, they’re vulnerable, they’re special, and they’re amazing.

“Despite all the challenges that they face every day, they come to school, they smile, and they do their best.”

In the background, political efforts were ongoing to see if St Killian’s could be included in the scheme. A meeting between the parents and teachers of St Killian’s with local politicians was held in early September, at which the case was made powerfully and emotionally that the pledge made the previous November should be honoured.

It also came to light at that meeting that none of the four special schools in Cork - St Paul’s in Montenotte, Rochestown Special School, Carrigaline Community Special School, and Our Lady of Good Counsel Special School in Ballincollig - had seen any progress in the restoration of therapists.

These schools will now begin to see therapists in the New Year, but not before the issue was raised on numerous occasions in the Dáil and at Oireachtas committees where the minister, Ms Rabbitte, came under intense pressure to explain why there was a delay.

The major difficulty experienced by all of the schools selected for the pilot schemes was the lack of consultation, explained St Paul’s Special School principal Anne Hartnett. “If they may have consulted with us on the first day, then none of this disaster would have happened,” she said.

Notification was the best they could hope for – and often that arrived late in the day.

Lesson 

The lesson seems to have been learned at this stage as, at the beginning of December, the principals of the four schools selected for the initial phase of the pilot met with officials from the Department of Education, the National Council for Special Education, and the Health Service to discuss how the scheme would be implemented.

“We will be having a speech and language therapist who will be starting on January 20 and the Occupational Therapist has been employed – that took a little longer – and they should be with us by the end of January, we hope, once the formalities have been gone through – there’s different start dates for the other special schools (in the first phase),” said Ms Hartnett.

The logjam for St Killian’s was broken in October when the HSE Regional Chief Executive, Andy Philips, took the initiative and allocated interim funding of €40,000 for the school to go ahead with arrangements which they had been working on to secure the service of a private firm to provide the therapists.

As Eibhlín Gleeson, the chairperson of St Killian’s Parents United, explained, they have been reassured that their children will be finally seeing therapists in January, five years after they had been withdrawn. The focus of the parents now is that the service, once restored, is never interrupted again, not for a day nor a week even, never mind five years.

“We don’t have confirmation of that, but we have asked for that. We cannot be without therapists again, we’ve made that clear, we’ve spoken directly to the HSE and they seem open to it, but there’s no guarantees,” said Ms Gleeson.

Red line issue

She was reassured to a certain extent by the fact that they appear to have political support. Tánaiste Mícheál Martin has gone so far as to declare it a ‘red line’ issue for Fianna Fáil in talks about the formation of a new Government, a point he reiterated when speaking in the Dáil this week.

“As Fianna Fáil made clear during the campaign, a commitment to a radical change and expansion in the availability of therapies for children with special needs is a core demand of ours,” he said, in a speech outlining what his party’s requirements would be in its talks with others on Government formation.

“At all levels and in all parts of Government, we want disability to not just receive additional funding but also to benefit from an openness to new approaches and a new urgency.”

While the formation of the Government is not likely to be finalised until January 22, when the Dáil reconvenes, at the earliest, the expectation is that the St Killian’s and all the other special schools in Cork and across Ireland will be gaining the support they require.

Vulnerable

“They’re vulnerable children and every second counts – if you had children in a mainstream school who weren’t accessing their education, there would be panic,” Ms Gleeson said. “The panic is the same in special schools.

“I think that’s something we could be better at communicating as parents, our needs for our children are different, it’s important that we’re communicating that and we’re heard.”

At the same time, she expressed the feeling that they weren’t demanding more from the system than should be provided as a matter of course. “It isn’t up to us to educate society about our children, but unfortunately there is so much misunderstanding about what our children need to participate in in life.”