The HSE have said the demand for Disability Services is "extremely high" as thousands of children are waiting over a year for initial contact from Children’s Disability Network Teams (CDNTs).
The document from the HSE shows there are thousands of children from Community Healthcare Organisation (CHO) areas waiting over 12 months for initial contact from a CDNT, as of June 2023.
A total of 91 CDNTs are aligned to 96 Community Healthcare Networks (CHNs) across the country and are providing services and supports for children aged from birth to 18 years of age.
CDNTs comprise health and social care professionals, including nursing, occupational therapy, psychology, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, social work and others.
The worst affected area is CHO 9, which covers Dublin North, Dublin North Central and Dublin North West, has 2408 children waiting for initial contact.
CHO 7, which covers Kildare/West Wicklow, Dublin West, Dublin South City and Dublin South City has 1825 children waiting to be seen.
CHO 5 is the third worst affected area with 1424 children waiting for contact, which covers South Tipperary, Carlow Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford.
CHO 4, which covers Kerry, North Cork, South Lee and West Cork has 1096 children waiting to be seen by CDNTs.
This is followed by CHO 8 with 1,076 children in Laois/Offaly, Longford/Westmeath and Louth/Meath.
Details, accessed under Freedom of Information rules show in the middle of 2023, there were 2492 applications for non-residential disability services, which includes personal assistance, enhanced day services and respite services. There has also been 1296 applicants for new residential services.
A spokesperson from the Department of Children said the difficulties in accessing services "is in large part due to vacancies across CDNTs, with the HSE and the various Lead Agencies experiencing ongoing challenges recruiting staff across a range of health and social care professional (HSCP) disciplines and grades to fully staff each team to maximum capacity. The average vacancy rate across the teams is currently 34 per cent."
"Funding has been provided for additional posts in recent years to enhance the capacity of CDNTs and shorten waiting times. The overall funding in provided to augment the CDNTs amounts to over 600 additional Whole Time Equivalent posts.
"In doing so, it is intended that CDNTs will see increasing staffing levels to meet both demand for assessments and therapy services."
