Lots of questions over helping people with FASD

I WAS moved by the article in The Weekend Mix where parents, despairing of getting help for their foster daughter with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, returned their child to the state care of Oranga Tamariki (ODT, 10.10.20).

The question is, what can be done for children on this spectrum?

The foster parents unsuccessfully sought funding, but how were they going to use the funding?

Where are the programmes and treatment facilities for this disorder?

Short of a new brain, short of disclosing at birth that the pregnant mother has drunk excessively during pregnancy, what can be done for these children — and later adults — many of whom end up in and out of prison and state care?

They are also in schools and preschools where they are probably labelled hyperactive or with oppositional defiant disorder.

Having been involved in education and social work and also been a probation officer, I am delighted to see Associate Prof Gibbs is studying this issue.

Alas, the article gave no clues as to what can or should be done to help people with FASD short of ‘‘external structure and lifelong scaffolding by adults who understand them’’.

We had this in the days of the big psychiatric hospitals which housed many people for life.

The deinstitutionalisation movement of the 1970s saw the end to these and the introduction of community care and mainstreaming with ample assurances given that adequate services and facilities would be provided.

Sadly it appears we are still lacking these facilities.

Where is the research showing us how to help the 3000 born in New Zealand each year with FASD?

Equally important, where are the warnings for pregnant mothers on alcohol bottles?

Clearly there is no point handing out funding if there is nothing meaningful to spend it on.

Ann Barrowclough

Kaikorai ..................................

BIBLE READING: The eternal God is your refuge. — Deuteronomy 33:27.