Joe O'Reilly urges end to children's assessment waiting lists
Joe O'Reilly urged parliamentary action to end waiting lists for children's assessments for conditions such as autism, dyspraxia and dyslexia and to improve follow-up services and CAMHS. He welcomed a special cabinet subcommittee on disabilities set up by Antichok and greater investment in training and places for health professionals, but warned that capacity and staffing shortfalls must be tackled.
O'Reilly said the great contemporary challenge is to end the waiting lists for assessments of children for conditions including autism, dyspraxia and dyslexia and to improve services after assessments. He also called for interventions in CAMHS to address urgent mental health needs among young people.
He welcomed two government initiatives in this area - the special cabinet subcommittee on disabilities set up by Antichok and increased investment aimed at creating more places for health professionals. O'Reilly said these steps are positive but insufficient on their own without addressing workforce capacity.
The speech highlighted a dearth of professionals such as speech therapists and psychologists and noted differences in contract conditions between section 39 personnel and directly employed government staff. O'Reilly urged creative solutions including use of private practitioners and cross-border initiatives - east-west - to reduce waiting lists and expand capacity.
He asked the leader to consider how the Dáil could prioritise the issue, proposing rolling debates and placing the problem top of the agenda while resources are available. O'Reilly stressed early intervention for children and teenagers is crucial to avoid catastrophic outcomes later and called for urgent, sustained attention to the topic.
Main concern
O'Reilly said the great contemporary challenge is to end the waiting lists for assessments of children for conditions including autism, dyspraxia and dyslexia and to improve services after assessments. He also called for interventions in CAMHS to address urgent mental health needs among young people.
Government initiatives welcomed
He welcomed two government initiatives in this area - the special cabinet subcommittee on disabilities set up by Antichok and increased investment aimed at creating more places for health professionals. O'Reilly said these steps are positive but insufficient on their own without addressing workforce capacity.
Capacity and staffing issues
The speech highlighted a dearth of professionals such as speech therapists and psychologists and noted differences in contract conditions between section 39 personnel and directly employed government staff. O'Reilly urged creative solutions including use of private practitioners and cross-border initiatives - east-west - to reduce waiting lists and expand capacity.
Parliamentary action requested
He asked the leader to consider how the Dáil could prioritise the issue, proposing rolling debates and placing the problem top of the agenda while resources are available. O'Reilly stressed early intervention for children and teenagers is crucial to avoid catastrophic outcomes later and called for urgent, sustained attention to the topic.
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Transcript
I think the great contemporary challenge now that thankfully and we all have our own interpretation of how we've arrived at that happy condition but I won't get go into that at the moment but now that we're in a prosperous and good budgetary position in this country the great contemporary challenge is to end the the waiting lists for assessments of our children for a number of conditions such as autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia etc etc all of those assessments and to end the waiting lists there to also improve the services after the ending of that waiting list and indeed to end the waiting list and similarly intervene in CAMHS so I think two initiatives have been taken by government in this regard which I welcome one is the special cabinet subcommittee set up by Antichok on disabilities and dealing with that and the other of course is the greater investment in places for health professionals because one of the issues here is capacity is the number of speech therapists and the number of psychologists etc we lack the number of professionals so I think a huge new emphasis has to go on this and a bit like we have to use initiatives such as involving private professionals indeed if it involves using cross-border initiatives indeed east-west any initiatives that will get the waiting lists down and then any initiative that will encourage and improve the professional the number of professionals we have to deal with them there's a dearth there and there is a problem with the difference in conditions in section 39 personnel and and government straight government people who are who are paid directly from the ministry so I just think that it behoves us in the Shannon to give this issue priority at a time when we're in a position to deal with it and and to debate it and to look at creative solutions as to how we can deal with it because if you as any of the number of us in this house have a background in education if we don't intervene very quickly uh with with children the results are cut are catastrophic if there's not an early intervention and quite if there's not an early intervention with teenagers with psychological difficulties etc and sometimes psychiatric issues again it's even more catastrophic with some awful results so I think this is an important area I'm asking the leader to see how could we go about dealing with it as a house how could we have rolling debates on it and how could it be put top of the agenda at a time when we are in a position to deal with it and should tackle it so I'll leave it at that thank you