Seanad debates

Tuesday, 24 January 2023

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Frances BlackFrances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is great to see the Cathaoirleach in the Chair. I congratulate the Leader on her new role. I hope everybody had a very peaceful and restorative break over the Christmas period.

I am sure that many in the Chamber will be familiar with the disturbing findings in the most recent report on child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, from the Mental Health Commission. It paints an absolutely stark picture of the state of CAMHS in this country. The report describes a disorganised, patchwork system operating in a chaotic and dysfunctional manner despite the best efforts of overstretched and exhausted healthcare workers. It is a system that is desperately in need of a radical overhaul to ensure that children's rights to dignity, safety and the highest standard of medical care are vindicated.

So many alarming issues are revealed in this report. I do not have time to go through them all but I will share some of them. The lack of proper case management is truly shocking. The revelation that children are being put on anti-psychotic medications without the proper medical monitoring in line with international best practices is deeply troubling. Have lessons been learned from the major scandal in south Kerry CAMHS that emerged just a few months ago? The report outlines how hundreds of children have been lost in the CAMHS system due to a failure to follow up on their cases. The lack of care taken with these children is horrifying. It should make us absolutely outraged and inspire action, a desire for change and accountability. These services are seriously and dangerously understaffed. Some of them are based in inadequate premises and an overwhelming number of them do not have access to online case-management and record-keeping software. Without adequate staffing, resources and infrastructure these services are being set up to fail.

As previous speakers stated, our healthcare system is deeply dysfunctional. It lurches from one crisis to the next. I fear that we are getting to a stage where this kind of perpetual crisis has become normalised.That is worrying. I worry the public will become so pessimistic and cynical that they will stop expecting anything better. A roadmap is needed for the root and branch revitalisation of CAMHS. Ring-fenced funding, minimum staffing levels, further legislative regulation in the Mental Health Act and a tangible benchmark that progress can be measured against are needed. This can no longer be waved away with promises and good intentions. We have to remember the Proclamation of the Irish Republic contains a promise to cherish "all the children of our nation equally" and here we are more than a century later with families at their wits' end with worry, struggling to access help for their children's mental health issues. We are in a crisis. This is not a feature of a functioning republic. It is a sign of a failed state, to be honest. I ask that Minister of State, Deputy Butler, address the House about her plans for CAMHS and her response to this report.

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