This article is from page 6 of the 2011-01-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
ONE of the mid-west region’s largest independent providers of therapies for children with special needs is reporting a “massive” increase in demand for its services.
Ann Norton, Director of the Clare Crusaders, said calls to the charity’s Barefield-based clinic have increased steadily over the past 12 months.
Ms Norton explained, “There is a massive demand. Monday and Tuesday alone, I got calls from seven parents. The problem that is out there, with the embargo in the Health Services Executive (HSE), is that one of the therapists in the Shannon area has gone on maternity leave and they don’t actually have someone to replace her. So we have just been inundated. I could not say that a day goes past that we don’t get a phone call from somebody.
“A few years ago, people had extra money and you were putting the money into your children. You were paying anything up to € 120 an hour for speech and language or for occupational therapy. Unfortunately people don’t have that anymore. The majority of people that have children with special needs would be getting different grant, respite or carers allowances but it has all gone. Everything has been reduced. So people don’t have that extra spare cash to put into the children.”
Founded in 2005, seven therapists are employed at the Clare Crusaders
clinic in the areas of re
flexology, physiothera
py, speech and language
therapy, occupational
therapy and Montessori.
170 children attend the
clinic on a weekly basis
while the Clare Crusad
ers also conducts ther
apy sessions in schools
in Ennis, Barefield and
Newmarket on Fergus.
Ms Norton added, “We do hands-on therapy. We don’t do assessments. We use the assessments that are provided by the HSE. We work with the kids one-on-one. We can’t do an assessment on a child and go around and say, well there is a waiting list for two years. By the time that two years comes up, you’d have to have an assessment again. So they are literally going around in circles again and it’s not good enough.”