Leo could do with being less touchy and more feely
The Government’s view of things can often seem removed from the reality of people’s lives, writes Brendan O’Connor
‘THE purpose of [the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities] is to ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity. This is a purpose that unites us all… A radical programme of reconfiguration of services is under way to support people with disabilities in making the type of choices that are available to everyone else in society, in order to enable them to live the lives they want to lead.”
That’s Finian McGrath TD, minister of state with special responsibility for disability issues, at the National Disability Authority’s annual conference last Thursday morning. “Can you imagine if [you are a person with an intellectual disability], your parents have passed away and you now have to move from house to house, week to week, from brother to sister — effectively couchsurfing — because we in Cope Foundation cannot provide a home for you in which to live?
“Can you imagine a family whose children with autism spectrum disorder may never see a therapist in Cope Foundation, or maybe once in their lifetime?
“Can you imagine sitting in front of a 90-year-old woman looking after a son with a disability, at home on her own, who you have known all your working life in Cope Foundation, and when she comes and asks for help, you have to say no?”
That’s Sean Abbot of the Cope Foundation in Cork, who has revealed that 400 children are currently waiting for assessment for autism spectrum disorder with Cope and a further 1,350 children who have got an assessment are currently waiting to access services with Cope.
Abbot says many of the children who should be getting services through Cope will have ‘aged out’ before they get any services. In other words, they will have become adults and still not have had any kind of intervention like speech and language therapy or other therapies to help them live some kind of a meaningful life. This is a far cry from getting “services… to support people with disabilities in making the type of choices that are available to everyone else in society, in order to enable them to live the lives they want to lead”.
Abbot’s view from the coal face, and Finian McGrath’s view from the top of Government contrast sharply. Abbot’s despair is palpable as he talks about having to make impossible choices, having to say no to desperate people, having to let down those who need help most, and working in a world where children wait years for the kind of basic supports that might help them “lead the lives they want to lead” — a world where that help all too often comes too late, or never.
These two views clashed in the Dail last week when Micheal Martin tackled Leo Varadkar on Cope’s desperate plea for more funding. While what was said was interesting, what the exchange really undermined was a certain tone evident from the Taoiseach.
Martin raised the crisis at Cope and suggested the Government lacked a vision for how to deal with disability.
Varadkar had two lines of defence: Firstly, he said Cope has been given a 26pc increase in its budget under this coalition. He said he wasn’t sure if that increase had led to a corresponding increase in services, “but in general, taxpayers expect that a significant increase in funding should result in an increase in services and the quality of services”.
In other words, if there was a problem here, perhaps it was that Cope was not spending the money it was getting properly. So it wasn’t the Government’s fault. Varadkar went on to say that when it came to disability organisations, “there will never be enough to go around to satisfy all requests for increases”. Tonally, it felt a bit dismissive. It felt a little bit close to saying nothing is ever enough for these people.
The Taoiseach would not say there will never be enough money to pay for the dole for everyone who needs it. He would not say there will never be enough money to pay for pensions for everyone who needs them.
This is possibly because those two things are seen as rights, whereas disability services, still provided largely by ‘charities’ in this country, are not seen as rights, despite our enthusiasm about our ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Disability services can be seen as something we do out of grace and favour, a charity we provide if there’s money left over after the important things. And of course there will never be enough to provide timely assessments for children who need them, or to provide them all with vital services. So some people will just have to wait years or forever.
There was something amiss in Varadkar’s answer. Of course he is justified in trotting out the figures, but would some expression of humanity to the distressed families all over the country have gone astray? It was like the answer you’d get from an accountant. Not the kind of answer you’d expect from a human being, or a leader in touch with the more vulnerable members of society. It almost felt as if this kind of stuff is irritating for Varadkar, who would prefer to be out winning big on Brexit rather than dealing with this trifling stuff.
Varadkar’s second approach was to attack Fianna Fail for its own record in this area. So scoring a political point was what mattered primarily to Varadkar here, rather than the tiresome issue of disability services.
It felt a bit similar to the Taoiseach’s slightly tone-deaf approach the day before to the savage death of Timothy Hourihane in Cork last weekend. Timothy had been living on the streets and Varadkar listed off the services that had available to him, all funded by the Government. So this wasn’t the Government’s fault either.
This dismissive tone was evident in Varadkar’s “the Queen will still be the Queen” comments to unionists last Friday.
By the way, lest Leo Varadkar think kids with disabilities and their service providers are whooping it up with state money everywhere, he can relax. I have a child who was cut off from state-funded services at the age of five after she was deemed to have a ‘mild’ intellectual disability. Now, obviously I’m her dad and I think she’s great, but if Leo spent a day in my home, he wouldn’t call Mary’s issues mild. You don’t have a little bit of Down syndrome. So, you know, service providers in many areas are already setting a fairly high bar for who gets any services, when Down syndrome isn’t enough to qualify you.
I know many other people in the same situation. So like tens of thousands of parents all over the country, we pay for services, which, luckily, we can afford to do, and also try to help the centres when they have to get out the begging bowl. So don’t worry, Leo. No money being wasted on a lot of them. And a quick straw poll of people I know who actually manage to get an assessment while their child is still a child and qualify for services? You won’t actually believe this, but most say they are lucky if they get one session of speech and language or any therapy in a year.
“Services to support people with disabilities in making the type of choices that are available to everyone else in society, in order to enable them to live the lives they want to lead”, indeed.
‘You don’t have a little bit of Down syndrome’