Staff crisis in autism services: Call to subsidise travel for disability workers returning to Ireland

The State should subsidise travel for disability workers returning to Ireland to fill positions to help tackle a staffing crisis in autism services, according to a landmark Oireachtas report.

The report of the Joint Committee on Autism, which will be published on Wednesday, recommends new laws be put in place to oversee the enforcement of the State’s autism strategy, as well as a range of payments for families and individuals with autism, and measures targeted at improving conditions in the sector.

The report outlines how the committee was “shocked and alarmed” to learn about the financial impact of autism, and that there is an “undue burden” on people with autism, families and others who cater for their needs “with limited ancillary supports”.

It said while there were instances of good practice and achievement, the committee “has had ample cause for concern in respect of the provision of services to autistic people in Ireland”.

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The report notes it is “imperative” that the Government passes legislation requiring the State to publish an autism strategy every three years, as well as establishing a committee or monitoring group including people with autism to draft and monitor the strategy.

Among its 109 recommendations is that a dedicated unit be established in the Department of the Taoiseach, similar to the group established to co-ordinate efforts to combat child poverty.

There is a focus on tackling staffing shortfalls in the sector through increasing the funding for the number of places in third-level courses in relevant professions such as occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, physiotherapy and other qualifications. There is a call to improve career progression in these professions and to incentivise public health working to ensure that fewer workers leave Ireland and that staff “do not feel compelled to supplement their income by working in the private sector”.

In the short term it calls on the Government to resolve pay parity issues in so-called section 39 bodies which provide services contracted by the State, and calls for measures to “attract staff in disciplines relevant to disability services who have the right to work in Ireland to return by subsidising travel costs to return to Ireland”.

Fine Gael senator Micheál Carrigy, the committee chairman, said there were about 800 empty positions in Children’s Disability Network Teams (CDNT) which should be filled by recruitment including from overseas while students were in training.

“It’s because those positions aren’t there that we’re looking at backlogs,” he said. “We have to incentivise people back into those positions and we can’t wait five years.”

The report also calls for financial support for families who access private services “due to their unavailability in the public health system”, as well as non-means tested disability payments for autistic and disabled people and their carers who incur high levels of expenditure due to their diagnosis.

It also calls for the income disregard for the carer’s allowance to be increased and for a pilot basic income scheme for carers, and for the benchmarking of the disability allowance alongside grants to assist autistic and disabled people in paying large one-off expenses.

It includes a call to ensure that autism is regarded as a “sensory disability” by local authorities for the purposes of accessing prioritised social housing.

Labour Senator Mark Wall, a committee member, said a lot of the testimony it heard was “very hard to listen to”. He called on the Government to honour a commitment to his party to use private practice to reduce waiting lists for assessments of need, a key element of establishing the care needs for people with autism.