'Protecting the neglect'

national | health / disability issues | opinion/analysis Saturday September 30, 2006 17:06 by Annie Shipsea

Listen up folks, please. This is about disability . No! Please dont go away!

Try to overcome your revulsion/boredom/indifference or whatever it is that so many of you apparently well-meaining activists and Indymedia readers do when it comes to this issue, judging from the the general level of interest that these reports usually get. Five thousand comments on the disctinction between the SP and the SWP, about four on rights for people with disability. Pardon my bluffness but how about cutting us all some slack in this corner, eh? Maybe even give us some of your time and effort?

I attended a meeting in a country locaiton on Thursday evening at which a representative of a major disability association told the audience that, under the terms of the recent Education of Persons with Special Needs Act, 2004

parents of children with disability may no longer be entitled to choose the school to which they send their children.

This is a right currently enjoyed by every other parent in the country and it was our right too until this wretched, wretched Act was forced onto the statute books against the wishes of just about everyone but the FF/PD bastards who wrote it. Remember, as you read on, that this Act is defiantly described by Fianna Fail as increasing the rights of parents and pwd.

The significance of this change in our status as citizens is alarming for our children. If resources are to be concentrated on certain schools it will not be long before those schools begin to be regarded as not quite the thing by well-heeled but ignorant sorts who secretly wont like the idea of their darlings being exposed to ours. It means our children may not be able to attend the same schools as their siblings or their friends - and rememer for many SEN kids, making friends can be very hard. My youngest son is ten and hasnt managed it yet. He is an expert on what it is to be bullied in school, though, because he speaks unusually, wets his pants when he find something very funny and has peculiar facial mannerisms - all of which characteristics have set him up for a 'warm' welcome from other kids. Among about a hundred examples I could give you, we once discovered he was paying money to three kids so that they would not chase him around the yard during breaks until he was exhausted and could run no more - this in a school where the principal swore that it was impossible that any bullying could be happening. Why do I demean myself and my son by coming on here and describing these personal detials? To tug on your heartstrings and play the emotinal blackmail card? Fuck off. On Thursday I was told that my son could be sent to another school if his presence was deemed to be detrimental to other children's educational interests. CAN YOU FEEL ANGRY WITH US ABOUT THAT, PLEASE! Can you hear the insult in it? Do you see the travesty of what the reality is?

So, parents may have no choice but to continue to send children to schools where they are bullied or are unhappy or where they think the ethos is not sympathetic to special needs - and there are many, many such schools.

Under this act, we no longer have a right to professional assessment of our childrens conditions. We have a right to request an assessment, though. What sort of fucking right is that. No assessment, no resources. And if you get a private, professional assessment done, your school, the NCSE or the Health Authority is under no obligation to take that assessment into account. That was another right we used to have before the Act.

In the past assessments were conducted by pshychologists and other professionals. Now they will be done by head teachers and SENO's none of whom are required to have any training or qualifications in respect of the conditions they are assessing. Is that an increase in rights for us and our children? The National Education Psychology Service appears no longer even to have a role in this process - they are in limbo and their services are more urgently needed than ever. The act is doing away with the right of children to a professional psychological assessment. You know why? Almost certainly so that official levels of ASD type disability can be artificially reduced and resources correspondingly reduced.

In the past the situation was that where a diagnosis of autism was confirmed, your child would have an automatic right to 5 hours of resource teaching (one-to-one). That was the top whack you could get even if your psychologist recommended 10 or more. Now under this rights-conferring Act (ha ha ha) a diagnosis will no longer trigger resources automatically. This, we were told on Thursday was because it hadnt really been in the best interests of the child for them to automatically have resources when they were diagnosed. I kid you not. That is what the woman said - it's on video.

The EPSEN Act 2004 was described at the meeting as 'a way forward'. Afterwards in the bar when I challenged the speaker with the observation that it was, in fact, 'a crock of shit ', she agreed with me and said 'and a very big one'. But no sign of that sentiment in her public address.

Now that I have finally stopped banging my head against the wall, I have a few questions for you.

What are you going to do? Its your problem too. Will you take this issue on the way you did the Irish Ferries workers' or the bin tax? Will you leave Dermot Lacey or the National Aquatic Centre to it for a while and give us a hand here?