Sir, – Indeed, as your Editorial (May 15th) highlighted, the annual crisis for school-leavers with disabilities rears it ugly head yet again.
The current crisis highlights the lack of strategic planning by various departments and agencies charged with providing services for people with a disability.
Imagine saying to an able-bodied school-leaver you can share a place in a secondary school or you can have a week on and week off at university. Yet this is what is invariably suggested to parents of children or young adults with the greatest of need for education and occupation.
Minister of State Kathleen Lynch TD, as did previous ministers, is blaming the agencies and services providers while the they in turn blame central government for this problem. Meanwhile, families suffer and are left waiting for this the most basic of needs. Behind every school-leaver there is a worn out and stressed parent struggling to get the most basic of service for their child. Their lives are on hold, with no opportunity to plan, work or respite.
What is galling about the current situation is that parents had alerted the Minister to the pending crisis, promises were made but little appears to have happened.
I suggest you keep this article on file as I predict you will be republishing it next year and the year after. – Yours, etc,