CHRONIC under-funding of occupational therapy services in the HSE has led to enormous waiting lists that leave children stuck for over a year without treatment, therapists have claimed.
It comes as the Irish Sun can reveal that Sinn Fein are planning to propose a major increase to Ireland’s capacity to train healthcare professionals in their alternative budget for 2023.
The latest figures show that more than 18,000 children are waiting for their first assessment of occupational therapy while some kids are forced to wait over a year for treatment.
These enormous waiting lists are forcing parents to pay for private occupational therapy services or risk their child’s issue getting worse while on waiting lists.
The HSE is struggling to recruit enough occupational therapists to meet the demand for services with gaps left in centres when a therapist goes for maternity leave.
The Association of Occupational Therapists in Ireland told the Irish Sun that chronic underfunding has left services critically understaffed.
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They said: “The historic chronic under-staffing and under-resourcing of HSE Occupational Therapy services is the primary factor underlying waiting lists.
“There are not enough occupational therapists employed by the HSE to meet the demand for essential Occupational Therapy services.
“This leads to long waiting lists and missed developmental opportunities for children.”
The Government’s own Disability Capacity Review shows that the demand for OT services for people with disabilities will increase by seven per cent by 2032 with a need to double the number of therapists in the HSE.
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The AOTI are calling for a full supply and demand review of occupational therapy services in Ireland to ensure that the annual output of OT graduates is sufficient to meet the demand for services.
The cost of increasing the number of occupational therapy graduates in Ireland by one per cent is between €39,000 and €41,000 a year – according to Higher Education Minister Simon Harris in response to a parliamentary question by Sinn Fein’s David Cullinane.
Deputy Cullinane told the Irish Sun that his party are planning to include a major increase in training capacities across all healthcare courses in their upcoming alternative budget for 2023.
The Sinn Fein health spokesman is calling on the Government to introduce a job guarantee for all graduates in key health care courses in Ireland.
‘TOO FEW THERAPISTS’
He said: “Essentially we just have way too few therapists. Occupational therapists are stretched across children’s services, adult services and also other services like assessing the need for house adaptions.
“They have a wide remit in healthcare and we simply don’t have enough of them.
“Our alternative budget will focus very heavily on increasing training capacity and staffing capacity within the public system.
“That will look at increasing the number of occupational therapists we’re training on the one hand and looking at what that will cost.
“But also looking at the reasons why we can’t attract them into the public system. The first thing we have to do is train more and the second thing is to make sure when we training them, we bring them into the public system.
“That is why we have proposed a job guarantee for all graduates and particularly those in health and social care across those areas where we have chronic staff shortages.”