Parents and teachers have expressed concern that a range of education services for autistic children are under threat because they are being kept on a pilot project basis by the Department of Education.
Seven units and three home programmes across the State provide one-to-one education for 150 autistic children. They were established largely due to lobbying by parents or High Court proceedings.
Many of the schools, however, have gone beyond their original pilot project life-span when they were established in recent years.
The schools are providing a form of education using Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), which teachers and parents say have produced dramatic progress among children.
Mr Marc de Salvo, the development officer with Saplings which runs an ABA unit in Kill, Co Kildare, said the unit's proposed length of time as a pilot project was originally three years. It is now spending its fourth year on this basis.
He said the Department's refusal to establish such units permanently meant parents were worried about how long their children would continue to receive intensive education.
"We thought we were through the pilot project phase, but the fear now is they could move to close down units," he said. "We feel left in limbo all the time. It also means we can't guarantee the jobs of staff, give tutors an incremental pay-scale or anything like that."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said a review of the services in the ABA units was under way and the results would inform future policy.
In the meantime the Department would continue to support the units so that services were available for the children involved, the spokeswoman added.
Some schools, such as CABAS in Dublin, Drogheda and Cork, said they had been asking for independent assessments since they were established.
Mr de Salvo said initial results from the units show substantial progress had been made. At the Saplings, seven of the first 13 children were now attending mainstream primary schools, he said.
"At Saplings, we have had schools from the UK and the North come down, asking us to provide specific training. The only place that has not recognised the huge impact we have made seems to be within our own Department of Education," Mr de Salvo said.
In addition, he said, there were waiting lists of children seeking to avail of education at Saplings, which is about to open two more early intervention centres in Dublin and the midlands.
Besides the recently established ABA units, the Department also provides in the region of 100 autism-specific classes. Most of these classes have larger pupil-teacher ratios, use a range of education approaches and are less expensive than ABA units.
A Department spokeswoman said the autism units and home programmes were established on a pilot basis as they were set up outside of the normal mainstream educational structures and they continued to operate on that basis.
