Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 November 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Disability Issues Update: Minister of State at the Department of Health

9:30 am

Photo of Sandra McLellanSandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and her officials, and thank her for her presentation. It covers a vast range of services across the sector so I will concentrate on a few points.

The Minister mentioned enabling our disabled citizens to live as independently as possible with appropriate social housing. We have raised this matter on a couple of occasions in the committee. Many people with disabilities who are living in social housing have difficulty accessing grants to adapt their housing. There is concern that some people are waiting on lists for years and cannot get their houses adapted through the local authorities. There is some type of breakdown between the Department of Health and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government or local authority housing departments on this. Is the Minister or her Department doing anything to try to improve that situation?

Regarding some of the figures the Minister gave in her report, have they improved since 2011 and by how much? The 190,000 overnight stays are being provided to people with both physical and mental disabilities. There are approximately 600,000 people in the country living with disabilities but those figures only provide two weeks of respite for approximately 13,500 people. When one breaks it down like that, it does not appear to be much. In addition, there does not appear to be a huge facility for people who are caring for people with mental health issues to access respite care. I have been dealing with carers of people suffering from mental health issues and they found it very difficult to access respite services. How is the 190,000 figure broken down with regard to mental health and disabilities?

Another issue is children with mental health problems accessing services. It has been brought to my attention that counselling services are very limited. It depends on where one lives in the country and how one accesses them. It has also been brought to my attention that they are not very consistent. It is hard to get consistency even if one manages to get counselling appointments. When one returns one often meets a different person, so the young person is constantly repeating themselves. How is the Minister addressing the gaps in that service regionally?

With regard to the €1.5 million once-off capital funding, what is that allocated for? As regards accessing services, the Minister said there should be a clear pathway to services for children with disabilities and their families, regardless of where they live. It has been brought to our attention that when people with disabilities who live in a rural area leave mainstream school at 18 years of age and require follow-on services, they often cannot get transport to and from these facilities. What is the Minister's opinion on that?

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