Don’t Leave them behind are delighted that our campaign to ensure that day care services are not removed in the Lockdown has worked and that the Government conformed yesterday that Day care services are regarded as an essential service and as such cannot be cancelled .
As you can see below we battled hard over the Christmas to ensure that the limited services we have are maintained .As we head into 2021 our key focus is to ensure that we have equality for people with disabilities and their families and carers, we will be launching this 2021 campaign next week .
2020 was a very bad year for people with disabilities and their carers ( as outlined below ) and this cannot be allowed to happen again.
Don’t Leave Them Behind recalls the horror we encountered last March with all day services and respite removed and with the State walking away from its responsibilities leaving 1000s of people to be support by their families and carers .
We witnessed key specialised staff taken away from disability services and moved by the HSE to work in “ contact Tracing “ work that never took place in April 2020 .
We watched as the HSE attempted to recruit support workers out of disability services with offers of higher salaries and pensions .
We worried when the HSE went ” online “ and ignored us advising us “Don’t Get COVID So” .
We watched as the politicians promised that our day care services and respite would return only to see 10 hours a week in October .
We then watched the HSE redeploy specialists to work on ‘ Vaccines ‘ and refuse to return them to disability services .
We now find that as the HSE struggle to roll out vaccines that they plan to again re-deploy key disability staff to Vaccinations and use this new lockdown to force people with disabilities to have no option but to isolate with support from their families and carers.
People with disabilities and their families cannot be left behind AGAIN and we are requesting urgent support as we head into level 5 -we are requesting a weekly pandemic support payment , funding that is assigned for day care services providers to be re-assigned to people with disabilities and/or their carers , a reclassification of the vaccination list for people with disabilities and their carers who currently do not have a place on this list and much more.
Lest make 2021 a special year for our community and deliver equality for all .