Save Barnacoyle school for Autistic children

Sifo

The Minister for Education & Science Mary Hanafin is refusing to properly fund Barnacoyle ABA School in Wicklow for young children with Autism which is due to close on Friday the 31st March yet she has no difficulty funding such facilities elsewhere.



Without Funding for this school the parents of these children have nowhere else to go. These vulnerable children are dependant on their specialised Tuition and any disruption to their education at this stage could wreak irreversible damage, the consequences of which will have to endured for the rest of their lives.



Would you mind going on the following link and signing the online petition to save this school and help the Parents fight for their children's right to be given a chance in life. You will learn about the parents struggle when you visit the website. Please Pass this on to as many people as you can - the more support we have the better!

If you don't mind taking a moment...



http://www.savebarnacoyle.com/petition.html

Siogfinsceal

of course i will sign. My cousin is autistic and I have seen how hard it is to obtain proper education and care.
Ive emailed my mates too

LB6

Done and good luck

email passed round work too!

nesf

Done

Beekay

Signed and emailed on

Ford Prefect

RANT BEGINS
Something is rotten in this government when it comes to autistic spectrum disorder.You might as well have leprosy.

We have a mildly austistic boy attending a special needs pre-school (i.e. funded/operated/run by DoE/Sci-DoH depending on who you talk to). He has progressed unbelievably since he started last September. A tribute to the pre-school operatives (i.e. the teacher and 2 special needs assistants - SNA's). His attendence will, however, be cut short as of June. They will not take him back for a further year as he is "too old" (age 5). They say that he is holding up a place for other kids to enrol in the pre-school.So now he has to stay at home next year with zero special needs education or support.

All at a time when the govt. are threatening to bring parents to court when their kids play truant or are kept away from school? Their policy, in our view, is that our kid should stay at home?I should point out at this time that all private options are, too, over-subscribed and that, with regard to autistic kids it's about ability and not age. You could have three 4-year old autistic kids. Two could be autistic. One could be a Rainman.One could just be quiet and the thrid one could be autistic. Wake up Mary Hanafin. Autistic kids work different. You can't have a cut-off age. It's about ability. You don't put someone on a rehab schedule after a car crash. If they still can't walk after six months, you don't go- "Sorry, you've had your six monts - good luck". You keep them until they can manage themselves. The same applies to autistic kids at this age. They are ready when they are ready. Not when they reach X years at mm/dd/yy.Even the notion of summer holidays rub with these kids.They rely on routine.When they wake up on a Saturday morning, they hate the notion of there being no school. Summer holidays? That doesn't wash with these kids.They need and hunger for attention and education. You are depriving them of that to their and society's detriment. Don't worry Mary,this time next year it won't be you.That's part of the govt strategy.Put someone else in your place next year and you're out of the firing line. Byoot as the Ozzies would say.You move on to something else and we're all back at square one. It's a genius strategy. Some other scuttering gobsheen comes in and his/her excuse is "I've only been here a day" and we start over.

So the DoE/Sci-DoH (hereinafter referred to as the govt) have no problem turfing our lad out into nothing for the 15 months commencing this summer. We'd go private only the same problem persists there - no places. The govt turn their noses up at ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) and rather spend the money on induction classes (e.g. Irish dancing) for our increasing immigrant population?

No, let me take that back. The money is there for both that and opening schools for special needs kids. But we have to go and stand outside the GPO and get petitions signed and go through all kinds of crap to just get some publicity. Let me remind you - a €2.4billion revenue surplus (http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/0302/exchequer.html). And they can't afford to put seat-belts on buses amongst other things.

Those other things being my kid - aged 5 - being refused a second year in a pre-school where he has made so much progress (i.e. uttering his first two-letter phrase ever, taking his first self-managed dump, negotiating the utility room door lock so he can get Petit Filous, etc.) only to be left out of the system for some unknown period of time. He's not ready for mainstream primary school (his 5yo cousin can play Snap - our lad doesn't know what a card is) and without the continuing education he's getting now will probably have no chance. In the meantime my wife will have to stay at home and mind him when she could be working, paying tax and he could be receiving the necessary education so that he can contribute to the economy when he is older.

Right now, we're confronted with the challenge ahead of bringing up a mildly autistic child up in this country. One need only recount the tale of the O'Carolan family who sought appropriate education for their child - Lewis - in Wales only to have been turned down for the associated costs of him receiving this education (http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0615/ocarolanl.html, http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2005/06/27ireland.html).

We spoke to his parents at the weekend whereupon we learned that Lewis was diagnosed as mildy autistic originally (like our kid). Because he didn't receive the treatment needed, well, I won't say but needless to say, Lewis isn't what he could have been. Some of you might have read the book review in the Times at the weekend - Send in the Idiots. It's about a class that was set up for autistic children in the US. The author (now a successful British government policy adviser) found four of his former classmates and records their stories - one of them commited suicide (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1582346194/102-6913889-6396915?v=glance&n=283155).

It is testament to the huge contribution that can be made by autistic children (sorry, children with autistic spectrum disorder) if they receive the right intervention at the right time. Their very nature leads them to careers where a high degree of precision is required. They have a great attention to detail and are naturally stubborn/uncomfortable when something is not acceptable (engineers, etc.)

Right now there is a queue of parents going to the courts to fight for their rights that their kids receive the appropriate education. They shouldn't be going as far as the courts for that. It's in the constitution and yet the govt fight it? The money they (both sides) are spending on it could just as easy go to specialist schools/pre-schools for these kids. But it's not.

It's very very wrong. Autism and Austic Spectrum Disorder diagnosis is increasing. Not because of MMR or for whatever reason. Oh happy day when that is found out but my own feeling that at least part of it is genetic/part immune system. The reality is that it's there (do you know some who is autstic/Aspergers/etc. ?) but nobody in the govt is willing to help out. Instead they're taking places away and shutting the door in the faces of the people that need it. It's like having no trolleys for A&E even though people need to be admitted.

In a nutshell, if you know of anybody who's child that's been diagnosed within the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (good luck for getting even that far - our kid was passed as "normal" by one of the country's leading paediatric consulants only to be deemed as autistic by a multi-disciplinary team), get out of this country because you'll only lose out in the long term. Don't bother trying to fight for your rights. You're operating under an illusion.

I'm not affiliated with any political party and, to be honest, the other shower(s) are no different to what's there already. The only way this will be acted on is if people related to (i.e. by family or by some other connection) children with autistic spectrum disorder make representations to their local school's board of management and their TD about this issue.

Naturally it will directly affect those people who know what I'm talking about but if you're a budding teacher or politician you will succumb to the machine that runs this country's special needs facilities. We know, we've brought one teacher to tears feeling guilty over the disservice our kid is receiving. But when we get letters home from one government department asking us to put pressure on another government department for these resources and even one minister refusing to address the situation when probed by another minister, what the f*ck else can we do.

As I said at the start, it's rotten to the core and God knows what other services are undergoing a similar treatment. It seems that it's always a minority that suffers so our voice is not heard.

I've always been a proponent of a null (not a spoiled) vote. In other words, what do you do if you don't like what any of the parties have to offer? So when the next election comes around, I'm going to be pulling down all of their ugly boat races (faces) off the lamp posts in the name of autistic spectrum disorder and dis-encfranchised sections of society.

When the time comes, I hope you will start asking the FF'ers where the €2.4b from last year has been spent. Because you know of one 5 year old kid who's sitting at home watching Dora the Explorer because some poxy pre-school policy prevented him from getting a second year while some dole-bludger somewhere gets to sit at home or some extra trees get re-planted at the Red Cow roundabout or some EU delegate gets a police escort around Dublin.

Bo11ox. We might be paying the lowest tax in the world but we still have a €2bn tax surplus. There's something wrong. We're either paying too much tax or we're not getting the services we deserve and need.

I'll admit, it's a bit of a drink-inhibitted polemic but I felt that the boards.ie people might have a head on their shoulders so that they might remember our plight in this money-slushed, resource-hungry economy when election time comes. And, God forbid you or yours have any kid with special needs because the infrastructure is simply not there to carry them.

Finally, I wish to say that there should be an ASD (autistic spectrum disorder)/Aspergers Syndrome forum. There are people and parents who need some kind of gathering place to feel they have some kind of united front in these causes and some kind of support network. Ireland Offline have found their feet and an outlet here in boards land as have other's.Us autistic'ers need an outlet and there's nothing there (apart from rollercoaster.ie).

So I'm off to cry in my pillow now and pray that the govt's money is spent to bring some kind of solace to the kids and parents left out in the cold.

Lump

Done.

John

ek942

Done.Good Luck with this.