Children With Psychiatric Illness Abandoned By The State

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Children With Serious Psychiatric Illness

Abandoned By The State By J. P. Anderson

Children with serious psychiatric problems are being forced to wait for a year or more before they are seen in mental health clinics, social workers warned yesterday.

And there is still no proper 24-hour service in place for families in crisis, leaving vulnerable people at risk.

Declan Coogan of the Irish Association of Social Workers said: "It is not acceptable to social workers in child and adolescent mental health services that many children and young people wait for a year or more to be seen for assessment at their local mental health service.

"Children living through a mental health crisis are also neglected because of the lack of in-patients beds for their age group.

"Letters were sent to the Minister for Health and the then Minister of State for Mental Health in May 2006. There has been no response," he added.

"We are also concerned about the continuing impact on services available to clients as a result of the Health Service Executive employment controls (which replaced the embargo) on recruitment."

Concerns

The recent budget represented an opportunity for the Government to address these concerns, yet no new money was allocated for the implementation of 'Vision for Change', the Government blueprint for development of mental health services, he added.

"We get children referred to us by teachers wondering if they have attention deficit disorder or behavioural problems

"We had great hopes that the Government would roll out more mental health teams but it has not done that.

"The worrying thing from our point of view is that problems get worse and worse as time goes on and they become harder to resolve."

He stressed this is an "urgent" problem and social workers are calling on the Government to treat it as such.

He outlined a number of cases of children in crisis:

l May is 16-years-old. For over a year, she has been hearing and seeing things no one else could see, and having racing thoughts beyond her control.

Her behaviour has got progressively worse. Her parents are at a loss to know what to do and cannot care for her at home.

She was told she would have to wait at least five weeks before she can be admitted to an in-patient unit.

After a five-day admission for assessment in a young persons unit, she may have to go to an adult unit, as there are no in-patient treatment units in her area.

l Tom is eight-years-old. He has serious emotional and behavioural problems at home and at school.

He has been on the waiting list for the local child and adolescent mental health service for the past two years and may wait another year.

While on the waiting list, his behaviour has got so much more difficult at school that he has reduced hours at school and his family are living with considerable stress.

l David is 15. Following an attempted suicide, he was seen urgently and assessed by a community mental health team.

David visits the clinic daily and he and his parents meet with two members of the team who re-arrange their other appointments.

One of David's parents has had to take extended time off work so that he can be supervised on a 24-hour basis.

More: http://www.hsengine.com/s_urgent+care+clinic.html