Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this issue. On behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, I am happy to provide an update to the House on therapeutic services in Scoil Cara junior school. As the Senator may be aware, Scoil Cara is one of a number of primary schools for children with autism in Cork. It was established in 2011, as outlined by the Senator, following a decision to divide Scoile Triest into a junior cycle school and a senior cycle school. Scoil Triest now provides special education to children with autism and mild to moderate intellectual disabilities who are aged 12 to 18 years. Scoil Cara provides special education to children with autism and mild to moderate learning difficulties aged five to 12 years. Both schools are under the patronage of the Brothers of Charity. The multidisciplinary supports provided to pupils of Scoil Cara include two days of speech and language therapy and two days of occupational therapy. Alongside this, psychology and physiotherapy services are provided on referral. These multidisciplinary resources were assigned to the school when it was established with 30 pupils in six classes back in 2011. However, the school now has 60 pupils in ten classes and, unfortunately, the Brothers of Charity services have not been able to increase the level of multidisciplinary support to the desired levels over the years.

As the Senator will be aware, the demand for therapy services has grown alongside significant year-on-year increases in the number of children applying for assessment, including assessment for autism spectrum disorder and disability services generally. The HSE recognises that services for school aged children with disabilities and early intervention services are paramount and need to be improved and organised more effectively. This process is well under way nationwide. HSE disability services is currently engaged in a major reconfiguration of its existing therapy resources for children with disabilities into multidisciplinary, geographically-based teams as part of its national programme on progressing disability services for children and young people aged up to 18 years. The key objective of this programme is to bring about equity of access to disability services and consistency of service delivery with a clear pathway for children with disabilities and their families to services, regardless of where they live or the nature of the individual child's difficulties. Evidence to date from areas where this has been rolled out shows that implementation of this programme will also have a positive impact on waiting lists both for assessments and therapies. The HSE is working towards having the progressing disability services model in place in Cork by the second quarter of 2019. It is expected that this will facilitate access to therapies for all children with disabilities.