Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My daughter is 18 years old. She is a fun-loving criminal. There is so much anxiety, and I am just speaking from our experience. There is a constant failure of the home care package and my son has very few supports, so he has now internalised the fact he cannot expect independence. In his own expectations, he has internalised the idea he will always have to depend on a family member and that services do not work. It is so profound on so many levels. The anxiety it provokes is like a panic. The overwhelming levels of unmet need at every level, whether the child and adolescent mental health services, disability supports, the children’s disability network teams, CDNTs, or the progressing disability services programme. It is all failure. There is a universal failure, across the board. Is this unique to Ireland? Are we different from other jurisdictions in the way we relate to disability? I cannot get my head around it.