Avril McMonagle
Donegal County Childcare today expressed huge disappointment at a local HSE decision to prematurely remove existing Special Needs Assistant grants to children with disabilities to enable them to attend pre-school services in September this year.
This is despite a directive from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs that all existing HSE supports should be retained whilst a new support programme is introduced over the next 3 years.
It is also apparent that this directive does not affect the Sligo and Leitrim region where similar supports have been protected.
The new Access and Inclusion programme is aimed at providing supports to children with disabilities in pre-school commencing in September 2016 which is expected to cost 24m per year once fully implemented. The programme is being introduced on a phased basis and will take approximately 3-4 years to become properly embedded in the early childhood sector.
This is because capacity has to be built within the early childhood sector to improve its qualifications and confidence in fully meeting the needs of all children with complex disabilities and needs.
The success of the model is hugely dependent upon the HSE in Donegal allowing existing support grants, which are used to partially fund either a shared or 1:1 Special Needs Assistant, to remain in place until transition to the new model is complete. Nevertheless, Donegal County Childcare became aware of a higher than usual number of SEN grant application refusals in June 2016.
Following a surge of calls from parents and childcare providers, Donegal County Childcare carried out a survey across all 145 early childhood services in Donegal to compare 2016 grant approvals against that of previous years.
Avril McMonagle, County Childcare Manager said “SNA applications have been submitted for 64 children from 43 early childhood services across the county. The highest concentration of applications was from the Inis Eoghain region (22) followed by the Donegal region (18).
“Findings clearly indicate that by comparison to last year, there is a 65% reduction in HSE grant allocations for Special Needs Assistant supports for the forthcoming pre-school year. The grant refusal rate in the Inis Eoghain area is the most noteworthy of all electoral areas.”
Avril continued “This is an extremely disappointing development in light of fact that this is a decision that has been taken locally in Donegal. The introduction of the new Access and Inclusion Initiative is a significant positive development for our sector and one that has been warmly welcomed by Donegal County Childcare.
“The decision by HSE to prematurely remove existing supports is hugely damaging to the future success of the initiative. Unless this decision is reversed immediately, vulnerable children in Donegal may not be able to attend mainstream pre-schools at all.”
