Sir, – As a GP working daily with vulnerable families, I am bemused by the level of public debate about abortion and the protection of mothers and children. This is in stark contrast with the indifference shown to the many children whose basic needs are being neglected on a daily basis by the health service, the Government, and also by the rest of society, which ignores the many signs of such neglect and is not bothered to challenge our politicians about it.
One such sign is the most recent Hiqa report into social work services in North West Dublin (Home News, February 22nd). Its introduction observing that there were more children in foster care in this area than any other in the State, went a long way to explaining the deficiencies outlined in the rest of the report. Overwhelming workload and lack of resources (ie trained professionals) contribute hugely to these deficiencies.
Areas of deprivation have much higher needs of critical services for child welfare but generally have the same provision as other areas. This is known as the inverse care law, where those most in need of services are least likely to get them.
Blunt, universally applied austerity policies such as the HSE recruitment embargo are having much more serious effects in these areas, which were understaffed to begin with.
When I meet a vulnerable family in crisis today, it is impossible to provide an adequate response for either parents or child. There are many such crises, from stressed or addicted parents to very young mothers with young children who are homeless, and cannot navigate the now byzantine obstacles in the system recently highlighted by Fr Peter McVerry (Letters, May 2nd). The funding for the local therapy service for parents has been cut and waiting time is now four months; family therapy and child psychiatry, six months. The social work service, exempt from the embargo to a degree, has improved far enough to provide an emergency service (deciding if a child needs to be taken into care that day) but cannot then follow up or monitor most of those referrals because it is so overwhelmed, until an entirely predictable emergency arises again. All of the professionals in these services, as well as GPs and public health nurses, are working to the limit of their capacity and often beyond. It is no coincidence that north Dublin has the lowest ratio of GPs to patients in the country.
The mantra of across-the-board cuts has to be challenged, and the suggestion that such issues can be “managed” without adequate resources, exposed for the emperor with no clothes that it is. Real management would entail making cuts where least harm will be done, and protecting those who are already suffering enormously – or taking money from other departments.
As I finish a day of work that involves multiple calls and letters frantically trying to get services for yet another family in crisis, I leave my surgery to pass the new bridge being built across the N3. Who decided that drivers waiting in traffic are much more important than precious little people waiting for help that could impact on their whole lives – the troika or the Government?
Where was the public outcry, and where were all the conscience-stricken politicians, when the report on the deaths of children in State care was published? If a fraction of the passion and energy that has gone into the abortion debate could be focused on the born children of this country whose lives are being blighted by our indifference and neglect, I might find it easier to believe that the people of this country really do value human life. – Yours, etc,
Dr EDEL McGINNITY,
Main Street,
Mulhuddart, Dublin 15.