Madam, - As the national body representing all people with disabilities we welcome the article by Siobhán Barron, director of the National Disability Authority calling for the implementation of the Code of Practice for Sheltered Occupational Services (Opinion & Analysis, September 6th) .
The draft code was prepared some years ago, long before the setting up of the new Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) and the standards for public services that HIQA is now beginning to implement.
Our concern is that while codes of practice do work, in some cases very well, they hardly carry the weight of agreed national standards, particularly for services as vital as health.
National standards set out the quality standards that services and organisations are expected to apply uniformly across the country. Anything less is simply not acceptable.
The HIQA is ideally placed to oversee the implementation of these.
Up to 90 per cent of the Department of Health's disability budget is consumed by not-for-profit organisations. Up to now there have been no national standards set for the services they provide.
No doubt many, perhaps even the majority, have been doing excellent work to a very fine standard. However, we have no way of knowing that, or even how appropriate many of the services are in a modern Ireland.
The full implementation of national standards is long overdue. Unfortunately, it is likely to be years before we see it. We can only hope that there will be no watering down of the standards in the meantime. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL D RINGROSE,
Chief Exeutive,
PWDI (People with
Disabilities in Ireland),
Jervis Street,
Dublin 1.
