Kilkenny dad's plea - 'I love my son but we need help now'

ABOVE: James Egars with his sisters Lauren and Rachel

A  dad is pleading for support services for his beautiful boy, a teenager with autism.
“We can’t do anything, we can’t go anywhere. There’s nothing left of us,” a broken Ger Egars said this week. “I want the people of Kilkenny to know what’s happening to people like us.”

Ger and Claire Egars live in Loughboy. They have two daughters, Lauren (22) who has just had her own baby LilyRose, Rachel who is about to head off to college, and 14-year-old son James.
James, their ‘beautiful boy’, loves music and dancing, he loves cars and has a great eye for photography.
But James has autism and, his family think, undiagnosed ADHD.

“He’s 14 and so strong. He has really, really hurt us,” Ger said.
His desperate plea is for the medical appointments James needs. For both his son’s sake and the health of the whole family.

In desperate need
“We are so overwhelmed. We have told them we are in desperate need, no one is helping us. What has to happen to get help?”

Ger says the situation is so stressful he has had days where he wanted to take his own life.
Two weeks ago Ger was going to pack in his job as a security man in Dunnes Stores, to stay at home with James. But his manager rang to see if he was ok and they told him ‘we have your back’.
“I got more help from my employer, who is not obliged to do it, than government,” he says. “The government is putting in millions but we are not seeing any of it.

“I worry I didn’t fight hard enough for James. When I get up in the morning I don’t know what’s ahead of me. I feel the same when I wake up as going to bed, always tired.”
He has no one to call when things get really hard.

From the time James was 12 months old his parents knew he was autistic. “He never cried or anything when he was a baby,” Ger described. “You never knew he was there. He was too quiet.”
James didn’t really speak until he was about four years old, when his sister Rachel taught him.

But there were other changes around that time.
“When he was three, all hell broke loose. He was very hyper. He would jump off wardrobes or the stairs. If he ran into a neighbour’s garden I couldn’t get him back. He would keep walking and he didn’t miss mammy or daddy,” Ger said.

James struggles with all emotions.
“He’s 14 now and if I was to walk off and leave him in the park he wouldn’t care. But I couldn’t. He’d run. He has no awareness of danger. He’s 5’8”, a big chap. When he runs he could run through an old person or a child, he doesn’t see them.”

When James started school there were issues. Even though he was at an ASD unit which caters for children on the autism spectrum, in a local primary school, he couldn’t mix with others and was unpredictable.

After three years Ger and Claire took him out of that school. It took them six months ‘fighting tooth and nail’ to find another school place, and he is now happy at the School of the Holy Spirit.
But the hours outside school, and summer holidays, when the Egars family are on their own with James, are taking their toll. Please click next to continue reading...