Welcome for £13m plan to improve disabled children’s services

LOCAL families are adopting a ‘wait-and-see attitude’ to plans to improve services for disabled children across the North, including increasing short break provision.

Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has pledged an additional £13m a year to help rebuild the broken system, including up to £2m for the rest of the current financial calendar.

The money will be used to increase short breaks capacity and expand other supports in the community.

Mr Nesbitt said he believes the funding will deliver improvements within months. He further claimed all five health trusts have given assurances that they can ‘rapidly expand’ a number of services to improve short breaks capacity.

However, despite these promises, some local families remain sceptical, particularly regarding the question of whether Mr Nesbitt’s timeframe is realistic.

Omagh man Conor Keys, whose 13-year-old daughter Ruby has complex needs and exhibits extremely challenging behaviour, welcomed the announcement and said he hopes it takes shape as described.

“But my hopes are qualified by past experience. This is not going to be an easy problem to solve. The reason we currently have no short breaks capacity within the Western Trust is because the two facilities that used to provide these services are now occupied by long-term residents. Until that changes, until those long-term residents are given alternative accommodation, I don’t see how short breaks can be reinstated,” Mr Keys added.

Almost five years ago, Omagh’s Avalon House closed its doors to short-term stays. Before that, it had offered each eligible family four 48 hours breaks per year, plus one full week.

Recently, Rosebud Cottage in Derry, who offered sporadic short stays to some local children with severely complex needs and challenging behaviour, also took on a permanent resident, thus ending short breaks provision within the trust.

Last month Mr Keys, in order to illustrate how a lack of short breaks provision is pushing local families towards breaking point, shared his personal story with this newspaper.

“Since Avalon House closed, I know of several families that have come apart, and many more that are on the brink,” Mr Keys said.

The UlsterHerald understands the Western Trust has invited some local families affected by the absence of short breaks provision to attend a private meeting in mid-November.

“We hope during that meeting to be told Avalon House will again be made available to local families like us.

“What we fear, though, is that the trust will try to give us money to source our own care. The problem with that is that money is not the issue; getting somebody who will actually look after a child that is destructive, strong and unpredictable is the issue. It’s a resource problem. You can’t just give us money and expect us to hire a babysitter. It isn’t like that,” Mr Keys added.

When asked whether it intends to repurpose Avalon House as a short breaks facility, a Western Trust spokesperson said, “The Trust has submitted a number of proposals to the Department.

These included a variety of options to both expand existing short break capacity alongside developing a range of support services with the community and voluntary sector.

We are currently in discussion with our departmental colleagues about how to best take these options forward based on any allocation that we might receive.”