Finian McGrath
Question:639. Deputy Finian McGrath asked the Minister for Health if he will support the 15,776 children waiting for speech and language assessment. [16456/14]
View answerTuesday, 8 April 2014
Questions (639)
Written answers
The Government is committed to the provision and development of therapy services for children, including those with special needs, within available resources. Health related therapy supports and interventions for children can be accessed through both the Health Service Executive’s primary care services and its disability services.
The HSE's National Service Plan 2013 provided for additional funding of €20m to strengthen primary care services. This comprises over €18.5m for the recruitment of over 260 primary care team posts and over €1.4m to support community intervention team development. The posts include 52 whole-time equivalent Speech and Language Therapists. The recruitment process is ongoing in relation to these posts, with the majority of the posts filled or offered, subject to start dates being agreed.
In terms of disability services, therapy services for children are currently being reconfigured into geographically-based multidisciplinary teams, as part of the HSE’s Progressing Disability Services for Children and Young People (0-18years) Programme. The objective of this Programme is to achieve a national, unified approach to delivering disability health services so that there is a clear pathway to services for all children, regardless of where they live, what school they go to or the nature of their disability. The National Service Plan 2014 provides for targeted investment of €4m for the roll out of this Programme which equates to 80 additional therapy posts.
The Executive has introduced a number of initiatives to ensure that therapy services are delivered in as equitable a manner as possible and on the basis of prioritised need within available resources. These include therapists increasing clinic based work instead of domiciliary work and providing family centred interventions in a group, as opposed to a one-to-one setting, whenever possible. The additional investment that is being made in both primary care and disability services and the re-configuration of children’s disability services into geographically-based multidisciplinary teams will have a positive impact on the provision of clinical services for all children requiring access to health related supports, including speech and language therapy.
Finally, the figure cited by the Deputy, which is taken from the HSE's speech and language therapy minimum data set includes both children and adults waiting for initial speech and language therapy assessment up to the end of December 2013. The comparable figure for January 2014 indicates that the number of children and adults waiting for initial speech and language therapy assessment had fallen to 12,877. (It should be noted that data collected by the HSE in this regard does not provide a breakdown on the basis of age).