The Assessment of Need......Missing.....Presumed Dead.....
The Assessment of Need was introduced under the Disability Act 2005. A welcome venture. Its aim was to assess the need of every child whom required one. To determine what supports they required. Supports deemed essential for the child to develop, to function within school and society, to live the best quality of life they could. Who would not applaud this venture?
There were a total of 3,960 applications for assessment of need overdue for completion at the end of 2016. Let that sit for a moment. 3960 children awaiting assessment. That means that these children are not getting the services/supports they need, to enhance their quality of life, to meet their needs. That means the assessment of need process is not working as intended.
Why is not working? Well in short, it is not working because it is under-resourced. This seems to be a common trend in early intervention services. The services offered appear to be tokenistic at best. The needs of the child do not seem to be treated as important. The 'best interests of the child' are certainly not the primary consideration as indicated by the UNCRPD (Article 7). Given that Ireland has only recently ratified this convention though, 10 years after signing it, really speaks volumes about the government commitment to PWD.
I get the crazy notion to tie oneself to railings. I get it. That level of frustration is quite difficult to describe but even more difficult to live with. You watch your child, day in , day out. You see their growth and development and you rejoice.
But you also see the missed opportunities. And you weep. For the missed chances. For the missed experiences.
For your child.
I know, because I live it.
You have highlighted well one of the most problematic legacies of this disastrous period in the Irish disability sector. From the outset, ‘assessment of need’ meant little or nothing - and was so intended. No meaningful understanding of ‘assessment’ was ever provided. No parallel assessment of capacity was advanced. No definition of ‘need’ was provided. The process was phased in starting with the under 5s in an effort at emotional attrition on parents that produced little beyond humiliation and stress. Those charged with ‘assessing need’ were amateurs (I purloined a copy of the job description- only requirement was the Irish Leaving Certificate). Worst of all, after a wait of up to 2 years, the final ‘assessment’ had no legal weight and was “subject to available resources”. This has been an outrageous and wasteful farce. The conceptual flaws at its inception have been compounded by its uselessness in charting meaningful rights based inclusion for all impacted by the experience of disability.
This is a timely and worthwhile contribution to discussion on one of the most neglected aspects of the cynical deconstruction of disability rights perpetrated by the Irish State. Under the guise of “mainstreaming”, a systematic attempt to undo the (admittedly meagre) specialist services around disability commenced around 1997. This rejected professional supports, resources and meaningful advocacy as well as evidence based research on rehabilitation as ‘segregationist’. Instead of addressing the decades long scandal of outsourced service provision to largely unregulated “voluntary” bodies, this essentially neo-liberal assault targeted direct State monitoring as undertaken by the NRB, HRB and various international initiatives which had been prioritizing quality, standards and accountability. The creation of the largely irrelevant NDA in 2000 was accompanied by the dispersal of key professional capacity to largely uninterested or tokenism bodies such as FáS, citizens information and NEPS. Key international representation on respected bodies such as Rehabilitation International and Gladnet was abandoned to private charities. The glacial progress of new legislation resulted in largely aspirational acts that were largely ineffective as well as frequently incoherent.