PEOPLE OF WEXFORD ‘TIRED OF BEGGING FOR SERVICES’
DEPUTY WALLACE READS OUT LETTER FROM WEXFORD GIRL (14) IN DÁIL
SAYING that the people of Wexford were tired of begging for proper services, Deputy Mick Wallace said he had been approached by four different families in Wexford about ‘inadequate’ services for ‘suicidal children and teenagers’.
One of them, a 14-year-old girl, ‘ has presented HSE twice with suicidal thoughts’.
‘Her father committed suicide when she was younger and her uncle also committed suicide. She wrote a letter to the office of the Minister for Health recently. She received an acknowledgement, but nothing since,’ Deputy Wallace told the Dail before reading the letter (right of page) to the chamber in order to reflect her own words.
Deputy Wallace said he spoke recently in the Dail about a similar matter ‘when we had statements on hospital waiting lists’.
‘I referred to a woman who approached me in a supermarket in Wexford whose son presented with suicidal ideation and spent five days screaming for help in Wexford Hospital. Child psychiatry and child psychology services were not available through the county until someone was eventually dispatched from Dublin.
‘ The people in Wexford are tired of begging for proper services. The Minister of State can tell me about all the extra funding that is being provided and what is being done, but it is not being felt in Wexford by the people who need help from the State.
‘Such help is not there for them. What in God’s name can the Government do to help?’
Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, thanked Deputy Wallace for raising the matter and acknowledged the contents of the letter he read, ‘which was very bravely written by a 14-year-old.’
‘I know the Deputy will understand that I cannot comment on nor do I have information on individual cases. Having reared two children, I now find it very challenging to get my head around the fact that so many young people are familiar with the term “suicidal ideation”, never mind taking action. Our society seems to have changed to a significant extent.’
She said children and adolescents who present with suicidal ideation in Wexford, depending on their presentation or presenting problem, may be referred to a number of services including a school counsellor, teen counselling service in the Ferns Diocesan Youth Service, the HSE child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, in Wexford, the HSE primary care community psychology services, or the HSE self-harm intervention programme.
‘Child psychology services are delivered by a number of different agencies, including CAMHS, which employs psychologists, primary care psychology services and disability services for children with intellectual disabilities or autism. All referrals for CAMHS services come from a GP to a consultant psychiatrist and the CAMHS team. The team prioritises who is most urgently in need of psychological intervention.
‘Children and adolescents assessed and diagnosed by the team with a mental health disorder, and assessed as needing psychological intervention and at risk of suicide or who are highly distressed, are prioritised.’
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHY THERE IS NO HELP FOR CHILDREN WHEN THEY ASK FOR IT