Report Paul Murphy
Minister for Education Helen McEntee heard emotional and impassioned demands for more help for the education of schoolchildren with special needs when she attended a highly-charged meeting of parents and their children in Ashbourne last night. The Minister and the Chief Executive Officer of the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) had to field tough questioning from parents who said that they had been let down by the State in the provision of places for their children who were often left “languishing at home in depression” and without a school to go to.

The meeting in the Pillo Hotel was organised by the Equality in Education Campaign and chaired by Rachel Martin from FUSS Ireland (Families United for Services and Support) and it heard harrowing stories of parents who had approached multiple schools for places for their children but had been rejected. . The organisation said that for far too long services for disabled and neurodivergent children had been grossly underfunded and neglected and that every child deserved timely access to assessment, interventions and appropriate education settings.

The meeting was attended by Sinn Fein Deputy Darren O’Rourke, Cllr Helen Meyer and Minister of State for European Affairs Thomas Byrne, Independent Cllr Joe Bonner.  The meeting went on for 76 minutes and was addressed by 14 people.

Charlotte, who is on the board of the equality campaign said that she was there to represent her daughter “who has been failed time and time again”. Her story was a reflection of how the children of Ireland had been let down by the Government which had “chosen” to neglect children over accountability. “My daughter had undergone three assessment of needs yet not one of them has been fully completed to date. The process which should have identified her needs and provided solutions has left us in limbo. In desperation, to secure a special needs statement for her daughter she had turned to private assessment which cost €1,850 only to discover later that it was carried out
by an unregulated, unqualified psychologist, “a mistake that nearly cost me my daughter’s life”.

Self Harm
This failure underscores the lack of oversight and quality assurance of services, she said. From 18 months old her daughter had exhibited self-harming behaviours. She was repeatedly denied the help she so badly needed. At one of the family’s darkest moments when her daughter’s mental health had deteriorated rapidly and after months of visiting A&E with compulsion in the blood vessels in her eyes, they had been placed on a priority list for psychiatric care only to discover that due to something like their change of address they were refused. This bureaucratic oversight had caused “irreparable harm”.

“Every morning for the last few days I dreaded the sight of the postman because it brings another rejection letter, another reminder that my sweet beautiful girl is seen as nothing more than just a number. As you can imagine, this has taken a massive toll on me as her mother”. Over the past few years she had applied to 50 schools for a place for her daughter.

“Meanwhile, our Government spends millions on bike sheds, phone pouches while our children are left behind. There are new classes that only exist on paper, schools not ready to open their doors. The NCSC and the Department claim they have the resources and the SNAs but we’re ready when our children need them. Our Constitution promises to cherish every child but how come we call this
equality?” she asked.

Minister’s news

Ms Martin said they were very lucky to have present at the meeting Anne Marie Forde, a principal at Tullydonnel National School in Louth. They had approached every school in Ashbourne yet Anne Marie was the only one to step up and address the meeting. She said that listening to parents and others speaking at the meeting was one of the reasons why she had involved herself in campaigning for children with special needs. She welcomed the news from Minister McEntee on Monday morning that she was beginning plans to mandatory student teacher placements in special education settings.

“This morning when I woke up I thought there was a little bit of relief and that we are on the right road now. We are eventually acknowledging that we are on the right road for the training of teachers. I suppose it is a very conscious step in the right direction. We need to acknowledge the retrospective need for training for those teachers who are already on the ground, in the form of in-service training”. From the moment of diagnosis the battle for special children’s education had to begin, she said.

Some of people, mainly parents that attended the meeting many of the parents, teachers, some at times emotional and passionate at the current lack of direction and support. The minister Helen McEntee has promised action, one man went said that former ministers in education had ignored them and hoped this would be not the case going forward. The tensions and emotions in the room was palpable.

Make life easier
“I am a firm believer that we must make life easier for people especially those who are more vulnerable. I truly believe that I the services came to the child instead of the other way around, this is a more complete approach when schools, parents and multi-disciplinary team work in a multi- agency fashion with the child at the centre of it all”. The child could make progress and mainstream education for him or her could become a reality – but it could only happen with the correct support. She had been over in the European Parliament lately and they had spoken there of a proactive approach and not a confrontationary one.

Must be choice
Minister McEntee said that there was much more that needed to be done in education. One of the main things was about choice, about making sure that every parents and every child had a choice, to make sure that the Department of Education and the NCSE and the people present at the meeting made that choice available.

“It is not there at the moment but we will do everything on Heaven and Earth to make sure that that choice is there”. The first thing they were doing in the Department was making sure the bricks and mortar buildings were available, then to find out the children’s needs,
where they were living, where do they want to go to school and how the Government can put that in place as quickly as possible. Every year we are getting better. This year we have already sanctioned 336 new classrooms. This time last year we had 180 or 190. I want to get to a position where as the beginning of the year, the same way as every other child finds out where they are going to school, that that is happening for every other child. I believe that by next year we can identify that need early to the point where children will know exactly where they are going”. She said she didn’t want to see a child sitting on a bus for an hour and a half, when they shouldn’t be, to get to a school that is right for them”.

Child’s identity
John Kearney CEO of NESC for the past three years, a former teacher and school principal, said that he was present to hear the parents’ stories, to hear their frustrations. It was about the young children having an identity and it was incumbent on everyone to bring out their full potential. He wanted to very much acknowledge the groundwork the new Minister had done in the last couple of months. There was an accountability there in terms of making things happen and making them happen faster for parents and children in terms of getting school places. The 336 classrooms had been delivered, double the amount of special classes nationwide from this time last year. They were
heading for 400, he said. “Can we do it quicker and better? Of course we should. Progress has been made – this time last year there was no process, no structure”.

Huge frustration

Deputy Darren O’Rourke said “I’m sorry we have to be here but it’s a great credit to the organisers and the campaign that has brought us to this point”. As the recently appointed spokesperson on education he knew the huge frustration that existed in terms of access and supports. It was a fight that should not have to happen. As an Opposition TD he had a responsibility to hold a government to account, to welcome the positive moves and to “call out some of the nonsense of which there is plenty in terms of taxpayers’ money being spent in areas that it shouldn’t be. I’m an Irish Republican and my politics are Republican and driven by the 1916 Proclamation that we should cherish the
children of this national equally and as far as I am concerned by any reasonable measure we don’t live in a republic. We are a wealthy, wealthy country and by any measure we are failing those who need our support the most and that is a damning indictment. We can identify the problems and they are writ large in this room. We know the solutions, we know what it takes to get this done. We need to look at the detail of this. We know that the target of offering every child a school place by September isn’t where we need to be. We need to guarantee an appropriate school place for every child for September. They are two very different things. I don’t suggest that the Minister and the
Department and the NESC don’t want to get there but I firmly believe that we need to call it out that they are different things. We also need to say that we shouldn’t be in this place to start off with and it’s a damning indictment that we are.”