Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Assessments of Needs for Children with Disabilities: Engagement with Ombudsman for Children

Photo of Cathal CroweCathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise. This is really 2020, in that I have been attending three meetings simultaneously, two of which are virtual. I am listening through headphones and watching on screens.

Dr. Muldoon will be glad to know that I have saved the best meeting for last. I read his statement last night and I thank him for all the work that he and the Ombudsman for Children's office are doing for children. I am a father to three young children aged five, four and two, and when they go beyond our front door in the morning, we entrust them to teachers, who are excellent, but we also rely on offices such as Dr. Muldoon's to be guardians for all children in the country.

I wish to make a number of points. To put them into context at the outset, I was a primary school teacher for 16 years until February 2020, so I have seen the best and worst in State supports. I also have seen the very best in respect of how teachers and parents cobble resources together, deliver and do their best for children regardless of the circumstances. First, I want to focus on the private assessment of needs, which has been mentioned already today, whereby parents with the financial wherewithal have private assessments done. This introduces a degree of financial elitism and an element of "we have it, so we can do it" into disability, and disability should not be like that. There was a time when a parent could drive a few miles down the road, fork out a few hundred euro, and come away with a decent psychological report on their child. However, given the spectrum of special needs, they would probably have to get an occupational therapy report next, and could end up forking out €1,000 or €2,000 just to get to the bottom of the cause of the child's difficulties and the supports that are required for that child. There was a time when a parent could go, armed with those reports, to the school principal, and could feed the findings into the chain, right through to the Department of Education, and see the supports slowly trickle into place.

Increasingly, however, private needs assessments are not being accepted and only those referred through the school mechanism are being forwarded onwards to the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS. NEPS staff have come to my local school and the work they do is fantastic but there are not enough of them. They receive a shortlist of children who have been referred for assessment. Around a week before they come to a school, the principal will ask staff if there are children in their classes that they or the parents feel need to be assessed or reported. A shortlist is then drafted but the psychologist will have neither the time nor the resources to see all children on the list, so each year, there are children who should be seen but are not being seen, who have been referred through that mechanism. That is a very serious issue.

I also want to highlight that there is an overemphasis on the more visible disabilities. Physical disabilities can be seen, and what can be seen can be tackled. That has always been how humankind has seen difficulties and challenges; it is seen and fixed. However, there are many children with conditions such as dyspraxia and others which are unseen and can remain undetected for many years. I know of one local parent who told me that around one week after her son's leaving certificate examinations, he had decided to get his own assessment done, and he realised in adulthood much more about who he was as a person. Through no fault of his parents or the school, he had missed out and this was the fault of the mechanisms of support provided by the State. It is wrong that he left the education system and discovered a week later what his challenges were and how they could have been met in those years before that.

I will conclude shortly but I will make a few more points. I have a huge problem with special educational needs organisers, SENOs. I do not have a problem with them personally but with how they take reports, which contain hours and days of work on the part of educational psychologists - which are hefty, solid reports that dig deep into the needs and challenges of a child with special needs and that contain recommendations on how the child could be supported - and, without qualifications to equal or surpass those of the educational psychologists, interpret the reports and strike out paragraph after paragraph, ruling out support and recommendations. That this is happening shows that there is a problem with the law. If we took the political hats off some of the members attending the committee today, we would see that they have professional expertise. I would not for a moment stand up in any court of law and begin to question their integrity or ability to provide certain professional services, unless I was equally qualified. It is wrong that SENOs are empowered by the State to dismantle and dissect the reports of educational psychologists when they are not educational psychologists. It is fundamentally and legally wrong. I am surprised there has not been a case taken to the High Court on this issue. Recommendations for physical aids and appliances and assistive technology are also being struck out by individuals who are not as qualified as the professional who has recommended the use of these aids and appliances. There is something fundamentally, legally and morally wrong in that.

I want to address a few other points. Irish language exemptions are the bane of the lives of many teachers and parents. I know that people watch these meetings, and before there are comments on Twitter, I wish to state that I am not anti-Irish language. I love the Irish language but I do not love to witness a child struggling with a language that is causing them huge difficulty, aggravation and stress every day. The criteria for exempting a child from learning Irish are too strict. The child must attain results in standardised tests below the tenth percentile in a literacy attainment, which can be in word reading, reading comprehension or spelling. The gauge is too narrow and does not factor in the stresses caused by dyslexia and other issues that could be making it a colossal challenge for the child to learn the language every day. There are children who could function much better at school if that stress was taken away from them. If a child is able to learn Irish, then they should plough on, and I support them in doing so. It was said 20 or 30 years ago that one needed Irish to become a garda or a teacher. That is codswallop. If a child is suffering from stress and does not want to go to school because learning the language is too much for them, then the exemption criteria should be widened.

The last point I wish to make is that there is a deficiency in ASD units in schools, particularly in secondary schools, and some schools are passing the buck. There are large towns in Ireland with populations of 25,000 to 35,000 people that have an ASD unit in a school that only has capacity for six children. I would not even attempt to break down the percentages of that but it comes up well short of what is required. Finally, I wish to echo the point made so eloquently by Senator Fitzpatrick. It is an issue which is close to my heart, although I will not bring personal experiences into it, but there is a real drop off in supports provided when a child reaches adolescence and becomes an adult. They are treated by the general mental health services and psychological support services and overall, there is a shortfall in respect of the support provided at this stage. There are many aspects to a child, teenager and an adult coping and grappling with special needs in their life. The intellectual aspect is just one part of it. A person could be physically or emotionally healthy or the imbalances could be calibrated in a different way but the State supports are not meeting the needs as the children move beyond childhood and adolescence and into adulthood.

I have said enough. I am here to support Dr. Muldoon, not to grill him and I have full faith in him. If there is an issue that needs to be tackled and highlighted by this committee, it is that people who are not qualified enough are striking out recommendations. I would not tell a plumber or a mechanic how to do their job. A SENO should not look at of a volume of reports that are pivotal to a child's life and strike out the recommendations others have made. It is wrong, and I ask that the issue is championed by Dr. Muldoon's office.

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