Five organizations representing healthcare professionals have issued a joint statement to the HSE raising concerns about the safety of disability childcare services, reports RTE.
Organizations representing occupational therapists, speech therapists, social workers, physiotherapists and psychologists expressed concern about clinical governance, risk management and the “erosion of professional autonomy” within children’s disability services.
This, they argue, leads to a situation where an individual health and social care worker does not report to a specialist manager in a given discipline and does not understand his or her particular role in the disability service team.
Dr Mary Ó Meir of the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists said there were concerns that children were being seen in a structure that lacked proper governance.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, she said there were no concerns about child safety, but there was a problem with doctors not reporting cases to competent managers.
“Our concerns are that children are being seen by physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language psychologists, and the social workers in a structure that doesn’t have proper governance and proper supervision,” Ms Ó Mir said.
However, said Dr O Mir, children are a problem due to recruitment and retention problems.
“There is a 34% vacancy rate on average across all these professions. Last year, 60,000 hours of therapy less were delivered. So, people are not moving into these posts because they’re not supervised, they’re not structured. So, the fallout then is that waiting lists and waiting times increase for children,” she said, reports RTE.
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