Parents to picket HSE over autism services
Parents of children with autism and mental health issues say they will picket Marckievicz House over the ‘ woeful lack of services’ available to them.
Campaigner and mother Shelly Fletcher says the Sligo based group ‘ Our voice for their future’ is in the process of organising the white line protest for the end of the month.
“We will be standing outside the grounds of Markievicz House with placards on Friday, 26th May at 1130am. This is to coincide with nationwide white line protests taking place outside Community Health Offices across the country.”
The parents will also hold a series of public meetings in the north west region over the next three weeks with the first kicking off in The Bush Hotel, Carrick- on- Shannon this Friday, 5th May at 8pm.
Shelly says: “These meetings are designed to try to get more families to come on board with our campaign.
“We were delighted with the tremendous response from the media and the public both before and after our last march on 3rd April. There was a turn out of over two hundred people in Sligo alone when we marched on Nazareth House in protest over the poor services for children and adolescents with mental health difficulties. This was extremely encouraging.”
Shelly says that families need to continue to fight for better services and the more publicity generated from their campaign the better.
“We hope the publicity is going to help us. The HSE has to realise that we are not going away. This is something we feel passionate about. We can’t afford to let our kids get any worse than they already are. We are also doing this for the children coming behind ours - the kids that are not even in the system yet, who can’t get into the system because of chronic waiting lists and no resources in the service.”
The group has also written to the various relevant departments within the HSE as Shelly says: “We have contacted the head managers of all the different service providers in the region and we are waiting on a response.”
The HSE has admitted that the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service ( CAMHS) is under severe pressure in terms of resources.
There is still no full time psychiatrist despite the fact that best practice would suggest there should be two full time psychiatrists for this region alone to deal with the massive back log of cases. There is currently just one part time psychiatrist working 20 hours a week and that appointment was only made after an intense media campaign highlighted the situation.
There’s still a waiting list of almost 350 children with just 87 cases deemed a priority.
Shelly says that GP’s in the region were sent letters from the HSE in March telling them not to make any more referrals to CAMHS.
“The system is quite clearly at breaking point and we will continue to fight for our children who deserve and desperately need better services,” Shelly vows.