Wexford TD criticises ongoing delays with CAMHS and failures by HSE and Tusla to allocate voted budget to support parents and families needing urgent help and calls on Public Accounts Committee to investigate state spending on Child and Mental Health Services and Parenting Support.
Independent TD for Wexford and member of the Public Accounts Committee, Deputy Verona Murphy has called for a special hearing of the Public Accounts Committee to investigate public expenditure by the Department of Health, the HSE and Tusla on mental health support initiatives for children, teenagers and parents. Deputy Murphy has frequently raised the major challenges for families caused by the failings of CAMHS in the Dail and has now expressed her considerable alarm at the funding intentions for provision of support programmes for parents, children and teens.
A recent reply to a series of Parliamentary Questions had yielded no information from the HSE on spending plans for 2024 and indicated that Tusla had not yet allocated its budget for 2024.
Deputy Murphy commented “ I have consistently raised serious concerns with the shortcomings of the Child and Mental Health Services in Co. Wexford, but also nationally. The inability to provide an adequate response to dealing with alarming anxiety levels among children and teens is placing huge pressure on parents and other family members. Reports during 2023 from the Mental Health Commission highlighted a dysfunctional system with a lack of out of hours support, long waiting lists, staffing issues and an inability to provide therapeutic interventions. Sadly this is leading to more crisis situations where parents end up presenting their children and teens to the ED in local hospitals.
Continuing, the Independent TD said “If the HSE and Tusla are not able to provide adequate frontline services to families they should at the very least be providing sufficient funding for programmes to support parents manage and deal with anxiety among their children. I was deeply alarmed to learn that despite having a record Budget allocation of over €1bn, as of the end of November, Tusla had not decided its allocation of funding for 2024. I was unable to unearth any information from the HSE about their allocation for parenting support programmes and I still need answers from them. In particular we need to know how parenting elements of Slaintecare are being rolled out as part of the Healthy Communities programme. This programme was directly targeted at supporting the mental health of parents and healthy child development with evidence based parenting programmes being provided for vulnerable families in the 19 Healthy Community areas. How many of these programmes are being rolled out in 2024? Has adequate funding been allocated to meet the clear need?. We need an urgent assurance that funding for these parenting programmes will not be withdrawn or reduced as the HSE seeks to balance its 2024 Budget.”
The Deputy added “It is unacceptable that therapeutic services cannot be provided to young people who really need support. At the very least the State, through the HSE and Tusla should be exploring every possible means of supporting parents to manage and deal with extremely challenging situations. It is unacceptable that we have no information on how and if these supports will be provided in 2024.
Concluding, Deputy Murphy said that she would be requesting for the Secretaries General of the Departments of Health and Children, as well as the CEOs of the HSE and Tusla to attend before the PAC early in 2024 to account for their service provision and spending plans on helping parents and families to support their children and teens in dealing with unprecedented levels of mental health and wellbeing issues.
