As Ireland struggles to put in place a comprehensive test, trace and track system we have received a significant number of calls, emails and texts from very concerned carers and families supporting people with disabilities regarding that practice whereby the HSE are r-assigning skilled professionals who work on the care area to roles that are directly involved in the Test , Trace and Track system working on either contact tracing ,swabbing or in other related roles .
Key staff in roles such as
Occupational Therapists
Speech & Language Therapists
. Counsellors
. Physiotherapists
. Psychologists
. Social Care Workers
and many more have moved into the COVID 19 HSE team and the HSE has failed to replace them and of course this has resulted in a loss of services and support for people with disabilities .
In Day Care Services the HSE has informed their Section 37/39 providers that they will not release day care services support workers back to these organisations on the 1st September as agreed so that the return of these services would happen – subscribers will recall that some Day Care Services have not returned to people with disabilities since March the 11th and this failure to return these key staff back to the organisations are resulting with Day Cares Services cut significantly .
Many parents are finding that as they require Occupational Therapists to attend schools for equipment advice as they return have not yet appeared resulting in no activity for kids with disabilities in school .
The actions by the HSE to fill COVID 19 roles at the expense of those with disabilities is a scandal and once are demonstrates the lack of regard that the HSE hold the provision os services for people with disabilities .
Last week the HSE announced a requirement drive for Swabbers however the contracts offered ranged from 3/6 months and the salary on offer was circa €29,950 this will not encourage people to apply for these high risk roles and we expect the recruitment campaign to follow the disastrous Ireland’s Call campaign which resulted in just 40 contracts offered to Nurses from 60,000 applications.
As Ireland heads into the second wave of COVID 19 this situation will get worst as more tracing and tracking staff will be required and more specialists will be moved out of support services for people with disabilities .