Sir, – Marese McDonagh’s article highlighting the staffing crisis in the State’s child disability service, with over 700 vacancies in disability network teams for children currently in need of urgent speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy, is not only heartbreaking but shocking, given Ireland is considered a caring nation (News, March 3rd).
Parents feeling that they and their child have been sidelined, or that they have failed their child as they are unable to access the badly needed diagnostic and critical services support of health professionals due to the lack of personnel which has resulted in massive backlogs and delay for urgent and essential treatment, is a terrible indictment on our society and HSE and health services.
Children deserve better and this crisis in healthcare and all the caring professions with job vacancies and hundreds of posts going unfilled by doctors, nurses, hospital staff and therapists, social and care workers is a massive problem which must be tackled and solved.
Will the HSE consider funding visits to registered private therapists if there is no alternative available for a child left lingering on a disability services waiting list?
Many older doctors, consultants and GPs, nurses and social workers and carers and medical support staff currently working with our health services and hospitals would ruefully and readily admit that if they applied to study or work in their chosen field now they would not have adequate points to attend their chosen profession or courses in university, or be considered suitable for their roles which they have worked at and continue to work helping people and patients of all ages.
Entry into many of the above careers is now only the achieved by a number of high-point achieving individual students, who quickly fill the small number of available university places. Studying medicine or nursing or speech therapy as a vocation seems to be forgotten. Perhaps the criteria for entry to the caring professions across the board needs to be revisited with better and easier accessibility and training and even alternatives routes for those with a genuine vocation to work in our health services and hospitals and make a lifetime career in it.
Steps must also be taken to attract existing medical and social care professionals back into their roles by not only offering better financial inducements but far more flexible hours and arrangements for parents of young children or with elderly parents or duties. Long 12-hour shifts and inflexible rosters need to become a thing of the past while staff’s children are young and perhaps we should even consider letting medical and such caring staff work part time or only in the mornings for a few hours, or in the evenings or a weekend day, or even one day a week if it helps to solve our current problems. Do any of our hospitals provide creche services or nearby childminding services for their workers? Arrange easy daily travel and transport to rural areas for staff or help provide much-needed accommodation? We must do whatever it takes to solve this staff care crisis, as these children cannot wait as precious time is being lost.
The priority must surely be to get access to the badly needed medical care and supports that so many children and parents and patients are crying out for. – Yours, etc,
MARITA CONLON McKENNA,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.