Cork families facing ‘constant barriers’ for children with disabilities

Cork families are facing “constant barriers” to accessing supports for their children with disabilities, with one being told they could not get an autism assessment due to a shortage of psychologists, a Cork TD has said.

Labour TD and former secondary school teacher Eoghan Kenny raised the issue of assessments of need in the Dáil recently, saying the process is “one of the biggest difficulties I hear from families”. 

Mr Kenny said: “It is often in the most stressful of cases that families come to their local politician to try to progress an assessment of need. It is deeply emotional because at the centre is a child. That is the bottom line. Children are not being given the entitlements. They face barrier after barrier to get the essential therapies and supports they so badly need.”

He shared that a manager in a children’s disability network team in Cork told a family recently: “We are finding it impossible to source a psychologist to allow us to complete the assessments. We are continuing to explore all the options but we are not in a position to complete any autism assessment right now.”

Secondly, he highlighted that St Gabriel’s Special School in Cork had informed parents it would move to either a three-day or four-day week, due to a critical shortage of special needs assistants, though they announced shortly after that they would open as normal, after intervention by the department.

Mr Kenny said: “These children depend on consistency and care provide in schools. I compliment the minister of state, deputy Michael Moynihan, on the progress he has made in rolling out essential school therapies but students face consistent barriers. I know this from experience.

“There were children in my classroom at second level who should not have been in a mainstream environment. The reason they were, was there was such a backlog in assessment of need they were not given the opportunity to go to a special education needs setting. At the centre of this are children.”

The Echo contacted the HSE for comment.