A carer has spoken out on the difficulties that she and her colleagues face and how people with disabilities have been let down by services.
Jaimie Williams, from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, is a carer for her husband and two children, one of whom has complex needs. Her experiences with the system has led her to lead a public protest in the town and to co-found The Phoenix Rising Network.
Jaimie's child was guided away from the Assessment of Need (AoN) process and towards Child Disability Network Teams (CDNT), as it was promoted to vulnerable families as a faster, more efficient route to therapies.
"We basically started the entire process of asking for an initial assessment when he was about three and-a-half, and he was assessed by the doctor when he was four and-a-half.
"We wanted to make the best choice for our child, we wanted to take the advice.
After years of waiting, Ms Williams' son finally received an appointment with a psychologist.
However, following the appointment, they were left traumatised. Ms Williams doesn't blame the doctor, but says there must be better training.
"You have a certain expectation for a disability service. This is not a reflection on frontline workers who are doing their best in a really terrible position. This is a reflection on how it is being managed, which is a failure.
"You would expect, at a bare minimum for a disability service, that they would have the proper training in dealing with disabilities. It is the smallest ask that you could have for a disability team, and it wasn't there, and it was very apparent all through the assessment process for my son.
"You have an entire generation of children who are going through a failure of a system. They are not receiving services, they are not receiving therapies that are critical to their ability to thrive.
"They graduate out of the system having never received a single therapy, and they are put into a failure of a housing system, so you have young people who are being put into nursing homes and other inappropriate settings like hospital wards. It is just not right.
"It is failure, after failure, after failure. All you can think is what happens when I am not here to fight for this?"
There are over 13,000 children waiting for first contact from CDNT, 444 of whom are in Enniscorthy.
Contributing to this is the number of job vacancies in the system, with 19 vacancies in the Wexford town, where 23 positions are allocated.
As citizens go to the polls in the General Election many carers are critical of how they have been treated by the outgoing government.
While many of the political parties have campaign promises for people with disabilities, Ms Williams says a dedicated Minister for Disability is needed, along with abolishing means-testing for carers.
"The means test needs to go for caring and disability.
"Being forced into poverty should not be happening for one of the wealthiest country in the EU.
"Investing in people with disabilities and education, that is another thing that is an absolute must. We need to be investing in our people, and these people who have been left to rot."
One of the most controversial moments of this election campaign was the encounter between Fine Gael leader Simon Harris and Charlotte Fallon, a disability worker with St Joseph’s Foundation.
In a clip that went viral, footage shows Mr Harris on a canvass in Kanturk when Ms Fallon tells the Taoiseach carers “were ignored” and the Government has “done nothing for us”.
Mr Harris responds by saying “no, not at all” and “that’s not true” several times before shaking her hand.
Ms Williams says that is typically how care workers are treated.
"The only reason that he apologised is because he was caught on camera. That is my instant reaction to that because carers are treated that way every day by the structure of the system.
"We are kept under the thumb, we are kept under the poverty threshold, and expected to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the entirety of our lives."
