Sir, – Marese McDonagh tells the stories of children with disabilities unable to access services, despite the Progressing Disability Services initiative (PDI) ("The families fighting for services for children with disabilities: 'It's a soulless system'", News, May 6th).
We were assured that reconfiguring services under PDI would provide a clear pathway whereby our children would receive an equitable service based on their need and not their diagnosis.
We were told effective teams would work in partnership with families and education for the benefit of children and families.
And thankfully some of these teams are in place.
And they offer support. They tell us as parents we are the experts on our children. Which we are. But we are not therapists. We know our children need to communicate. But we are not speech and language therapists. We understand our children struggle to write, to catch a ball, to chew their food. But we are not occupational therapists.
We see our children don’t understand and process emotion and become frustrated. But we are not psychologists.
We know our children want to learn. But we never trained as teachers.
Acknowledging parents as a crucial support for our children is appropriate.
But to allow our children to progress with their disabilities, appropriately trained and supported health professionals need to be in post and play their part. Otherwise we all regress. – Yours, etc,
MARIA DUNNE,
Dublin 4.