Sir, - Why is it that we are reading about the shameful and ongoing practice of well children being admitted and kept in hospital wards for periods of time, sometimes up to a year? In his poignant and thought-provoking articles of January 14th, Padraig O'Morain states that Children in Hospital Ireland is aware of and concerned about this issue. This awareness is not recent! For at least seven years we have been expressing it to care workers, social workers, Department of Health personnel, other voluntary organisations, hospital managers and the media. Indeed, in the early 1990s, the then Minister for Health, in response to questions from this organisation, stated on RTE's News at One that he would ensure that this practice would stop immediately. It seems everyone agrees that keeping well children in hospital is wrong and should stop, yet here we are at the end of the millennium and well children are still spending prolonged time in alien hospital environments.
Our Charter for Children in Hospital, published in 1973, highlights the needs of child patients. Article 1 of this charter states that sick children should be admitted to hospital only when the care they require cannot be provided at home or on a daily basis. Article 2 states that children in hospital have the right to have a parent or a parent substitute with them at all times. These two principles recognise that hospital is not a preferred environment and that children need the support of their parents and families while they are there. How distressing it must be for well children watching their sick companions being cosseted by parents while they cannot understand why they are away from their own families - and how stigmatising for them to be so out of place. Obviously, in hospital, the focus of the staff's attention has to be on the sick children in their care, further psychologically and physically isolating the well child.
Children in Hospital Ireland hopes that concerned practitioners and journalists will continue to keep the issue to the forefront of our awareness, as in the absence of an Ombudsman for Children there is no one else to promote and protect their needs. - Yours, etc., Mary O'Connor, Development Director, Children in Hospital Ireland,
North Brunswick Street, Dublin 7.