Mary Hanafin recently advised parents of special needs children refused admission to fee-paying schools to sue them. Deirdre Muldoonargues for the Minister to discharge her own responsibilities
It is a strange twist that on the same day that I write this, the current Minister for Education is quoted as saying that fee-paying schools won't have any change to their funding (they receive €96 million a year) and that parents of children with special needs should begin legal action to get their children into these schools.
The provision of therapies for these same children, whether in fee-paying or "free" schools, is appalling. The lack of services, such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, behavioural intervention and psychological assessment, is a 21st-century scandal in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Small children with speech and language delay are often the most vulnerable victims of this scandal. Parents who realise that their child's language development is amiss face an assortment of murky options in attempting to remedy the situation. Clearly, as their taxes are paying for the Health Service Executive, they feel entitled to proceed there as the first port of call.
Unfortunately they are often met with a ridiculous waiting period; assessment can be up to 18 months or two years. So now they have a two-year-old child with perhaps a 10-month language delay who will have to wait another 24 months to be assessed. But that is okay, because when that child reaches secondary school age they are welcome to take legal action to gain admission to a fee-paying school. Suffice to say proceedings should begin immediately!
Another unacceptable injustice that is perpetuated by the HSE, one which is stymieing the efforts of many parents, is their refusal to see children for services if their parents are paying for that service privately. So if a parent seeks out a private service for their child, because of the inadequacy of the public service provision in their area, then the HSE will tell that parent they either won't see the child or will amend the waiting list as the child is no longer a priority.
This continues to happen despite this issue being brought to the attention of the highest officials in the HSE for many years and despite written guidelines within the HSE stating that this should not happen.
What if we as a country paid for the appropriate intervention when the child is two years old so that the child becomes indistinguishable from his or her peers, and stands an equal chance of getting to secondary school? And, if special needs provision is to be in the child's curriculum for life, then what if we intervene aggressively so that when the time for secondary school comes, they at least have a chance to make friends, acquire life skills, have a social life, through talking and playing in a more appropriate way?
Early intervention is widely accepted as the most cost-effective way to deal with special needs in the long term. Having been in the area of service provision for pre-schoolers for almost 20 years, I am familiar with many of the arguments about who should pay and why they won't.
However, understanding why the needs of the very young fall between two stools, the Department of Health and Children and the Department of Education, still manages to escape me.
This ridiculous situation allows no Government office to take ownership of this huge, gaping hole in educational provision in our wealthy country. It is time for someone to stand up and say that these silent toddlers and preschoolers have as much right to an appropriate preschool setting as any child. Preschool education is of paramount importance for all children, but particularly those who are starting off with the disadvantage of language delay.
What is needed for these little ones?
1. Funding of a nationwide intensive preschool service that will meet the speech and language, occupational therapy, behavioural and psychological needs of these preschool children.
2. Assessment alone is of no use; there must be intervention following identification of delay.
3. Acknowledgment by the Department of Education that this is not a health issue but an education issue.
Early intervention is costly. Appropriate intervention requires a high staff-to-child ratio in order to be effective. It requires the input of therapists and teachers alike. The outcome is that early intensive intervention allows a child to communicate and play and relieves many of the difficult behavioural issues that the parents of these children face.
It is a scandal that the Minister for Education advises legal action. It is a scandal that these children are not given a fair chance when their brains are at their most malleable and receptive to intervention, and it is a scandal that parents have to pay for this service while fighting to keep their child on a HSE waiting list and planning legal action for secondary school provision.
• Deirdre Muldoonis founder and clinical director of Early Language Intervention Ltd, an intensive preschool playgroup programme for children with language delay in the Dublin area