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

ABOVE: Ger and James as a toddler

Summer is hell
“Summer is hell. There’s no school, nothing. We usually go away foreign every year, but this year we didn’t. It’s too dangerous.”

Apart from four days on a summer camp for kids with special needs, James has been at home without any support services all summer.
“People like James have to be kept occupied all the time with something new,” Ger said.

“In the early days we had a great OT (occupational therapist) but we never really got supports.”
James had ‘some speech and language’ therapy as a young child, but it was his sister Rachel that taught him to speak, when she was eight and James was about four.

“When I say words, it’s what we would understand, not people outside the family,” said Ger.
“I’ll never forget the feeling, it was like winning the lotto, when he first said ‘dad’.”

They were so happy James had started to speak that when he used his first ‘f-word’ Ger was about to check him on it, but he had so few words they let that go.

“There are no supports for us,” Ger said. In the past year James has had two speech and language sessions. “It’s just ticking the boxes. They are not giving the kids what they need.”
Ger is begging the HSE and related child services for the appointments and, eventually medication, his son needs.

“You have a small window with kids like James. Everything they are doing now will have a long-term effect on James’ future.”

When James was first diagnosed he had an assessment of needs by a multidisciplinary team, Claire explained. Then there was ‘nothing’ until he started school and then there was some speech and language therapy. But he had none from when he was seven or eight until the two sessions more than six months ago.
“We are constantly fighting for James,” said Claire.

His behaviour is unpredictable. At a recent family barbecue he ‘went for’ his mother and was ‘going around thumping his head’.
Claire had explained to him they were going to see family and doesn’t know what triggered his outburst.
This is something the family deals with on a daily basis. “Ger steps in to protect us, says ‘don’t hit your mother and sisters’,” Claire said. Please click NEXT arrow to continue reading...