Grim message on autism
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Tuesday August 05 2008
JUST weeks ago, the Health Service Executive admitted that it was failing to meet the demand for specialist autism services. In reply to a parliamentary question, the HSE said it simply could not cope with the number of children who need help.
Today we learn that this failure manifests itself in three-year waiting lists for diagnosis.
Yes, one in every six families who suspect they have an autistic child must wait for up to three years to find out the extent of their problem and what treatment might be required. One in four will wait for more than a year.
These two facts -- the HSE admission that it cannot cope with the number of autistic children, and a scattergun approach to diagnosis -- are matters of grave concern.
Among the myriad of failings and embarrassments that beset the health service in this country, the plight of autistic children and their parents is perhaps the most distressing. The strain on parents who care for an autistic child has been expressed in the many heart-rending stories of families who beg and borrow to provide their children with what they regard as the best treatment. Some parents leave the country in search of better care elsewhere.
Earlier this year, following the release of a damning report, the Government was warned that inaction in the welfare of children will lead to a litany of social ills, including an increase in suicide and self-mutilation and family breakdown, which will cost the State dearly in the not too distant future.
The Autism Society of Ireland spelled out the reality of a worsening crisis, with an explosion of autistic children leaving the education system over the next five years.
Now the familiar, bitter, debate over the benefits of Applied Behavioural Analysis is overtaken by the revelation that many children are not even being diagnosed until long after the opportunity for early intervention has passed. What can we say to the minister and the HSE?
Time and again they tell us that this problem, or that, will be sorted when the parts of the jigsaw fall into place, such as the consultants' contracts, co-located hospitals and centres of excellence.
In the matter of autistic children, they simply admit failure.
What can we say?
Totting up the TDs' junkets
IT is all too easy to make fun of backbench TDs who go on foreign trips at the taxpayer's expense. So here we go. Politicians hate to see their important, fact-finding missions described as junkets, almost as much as journalists love to use that word.
The Oireachtas committee members who travelled across five continents in the past six months, at a cost of nearly €300,000, would prefer to see their trips described as important networking opportunities, crucial to the decision-making and policy-forming process, providing important insights into alternative road safety measures, climate change initiatives and parliamentary procedures.
Unfortunately for them, junket says it all, and fits more easily into a headline.
Even more unfortunately, the genuinely useful trips -- and there must be some -- are regularly overshadowed by bizarre adventures which make news editors squeal with delight.
Who could forget the nine Cabinet ministers who found pressing business to attend to in the United States when, coincidentally, the Irish soccer team was there to compete in the World Cup?
Then there were the six Fianna Fail MEPs who once went together on a winter 'study trip' to the Caribbean isle of Guadeloupe.
The annual St Patrick's Day exodus also adds to the public's suspicion that not all of these glad handing trips represent value for money. Today we run the value-for-money rule over trips which took place in recent months.
We also question the need for the existence of as many as 23 Oireachtas committees, whose members take these trips.
