According to governmental sources, as of September, vital therapy support will be reinstated in to special schools across the UK benefitting several vulnerable children. Various crucial therapeutic aids such as speech and language therapy and occupational therapy were withdrawn from 130 special schools nationwide due to the school closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. While plans for reinstating these services have been in the works, several special schools report that children still struggle to access these crucial supports.
As part of what is being referred to as a pilot project by governmental sources, 16 special schools are planned to host therapists for full school days, accounting for over a tenth of such schools in the UK. This pilot project, set to start in September, will be implemented across special schools in Dublin and Cork.
The HSE’s Children’s Disability Network Team along with the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) will back this programme. Hopes to extend this pilot project across all special schools, with a later emphasis on special classes in mainstream schools, are held by Hildegarde Naughton, the Minister of State, according to governmental sources.
Previously, Naughton stated that in-school therapy is a primary demand made by the school community at large and parents. The school environment’s therapeutic provision is said to improve the learning outcomes for children and young people and decrease reliance on additional educational classroom assistance, according to recent evidence.
Nonetheless, recent statistics reveal that thousands of disabled children have been on the waiting list to first interact with a specialist team for over a year due to rising demand and profound staff shortages in HSE services. The assessment of need process – a crucial first step to determine whether a person has a disability and their needs – remains pending application review for many of these children.
In response to a High Court rejection of the HSE’s attempt at reducing the backlog of needs assessment by capping preliminary assessment at 90 minutes, the HSE stated that this had had a “significant impact” on its operations, resulting in longer waiting lists. The court ruling has also added pressure on services to prioritise the demands of the statutory assessment of need process, majorly affecting the services’ ability to provide necessary treatment or intervention for disabled children.