Mr. Colm Leonard:

I thank the Deputy for his observations. Unfortunately, those are very much what we are hearing regularly from the families coming to us in crisis. When a family has a child with a disability, it impacts on the whole family. We need to remember that there are siblings and extended family members who are equally impacted. What those families need is a consistency of approach by services from the second their children are identified as having further needs. Often, families do not get early intervention or support along the way, so there is a sense of uncertainty about what will happen if they raise their heads above the parapet, question the limited services they are getting, ask for more services or highlight the difficulties they are facing daily. Some of those difficulties have been mentioned already. Families have children with significant behavioural problems and presentations. They are violent towards their siblings, parents and carers and they are injuring themselves. Families are at times afraid to identify these issues because they do not know what doing so would mean in terms of disruption to the family when services become involved and the focus may be on child protection or child welfare concerns. Other families are so overwhelmed by the same issues that they are approaching services, setting out what they have had to do, for example, restraining their children in the midst of crises, and asking for any service – child protection, mental health or disability – to become involved. They know that, if they can get into services, there are good practices.

Jack’s case highlights Tusla’s role in these matters. Child protection and welfare services have a pivotal role to play because they have skills and experience in dealing with these problematic issues after they have been left by the disability sector. Jack’s case is a good example of when services stop looking at children through the label or diagnosis of disability or through the issue of mental health that might emerge in that context. The services looked at the child and considered what they had in terms of resources. They looked at pooling the resources, skills and experiences to try to address that child’s needs alongside disability services.

These are children who do not fall neatly into one service or another. One day, it may be disability as a primacy of service. Other days, it might be child protection and welfare and others, it might be that mental health has a pivotal role. Therefore, there is that need for a joined up piece. As I say repeatedly, there are good practices out there and these are the cases that should be built upon because there is no one-size-fits-all solution for any of these children.