Crazy hse waiting lists for behaviour assessment

galah

Just a rant borne out of sheer frustration.

Our son is showing a few, shall we say, irrational behaviours in his latest childcare setting - he can be aggressive, easily frustrated, and doesnt deal well with large groups of children. We suspect it could be sensory issues, or he might be a little delayed and finds it hard to express emotions properly - no clue. Creche raised it (this was never an issue with the childminder he went to before as the group was a lot smaller obvs and there was a lot of attention on him.) he's otherwise fairly smart, very good with adults, and doesnt show any obvious glaring signs of learning disabilities or anything, which makes it very hard to even describe.

We flagged it to our gp, another doctor, and the health nurse. All three referred us to child psychology/paediatrics for assessment. However, the waiting list to be seen is currently 9-12 months long!!! This is absolutely insane. There dont seem to be private options ( as far as we were told), and there is absolutely no one we can turn to to get his behaviour assessed so we can start helping him it seems. He's down to go to school in september - but if this behaviour isnt addressed, i am not sure how that will go.

Does anyone have any insights or tips? How can paediatrics waiting list be allowed to be that long? Why is there seemingly so little interest in early intervention, which could save a lot of money and effort in the long run?

It is incredibly frustrating to hear bad reports every day (he still loves to go to creche though, otherwise we would have taken him out a long time ago) with absolutely no way of helping him cope better (apart from the bits we're trying ourselves, role plays etc - but we could be doing more damage than good for all we know...).

:mad:

tinkerbell

There is a private option - The Children's Practice in the Beacon, Sandyford. I notice you're in Galway but if you're willing to travel, you could book an appointment with them.

http://www.thechildrenspractice.ie

yellow hen

Would most private paediatric OT's not diagnose sensory issues? I suspect my son has similar and we're going private to an OT next Tuesday. Dreading it up he honest.

cassid

That is actually a short waiting time compared to other parts of the country. A private OT will assess for sensory issues, Catts Ireland are very good, you are looking at about €300 to €400 for full assessment and report. The problem with the private route is that you then have to consider private therapy which can be very expensive, sensory issues can require on-going therapy for years.

My child was assessed and diagnosed publicly at 2 and has done 6 years of OT therapy, 5 years in Temple Street and then in the community. Once you get into the public system it is good and it is easier to get referrals for other issues often related to sensory problems.

sm213

Another problem is if hse doesn't accept a certain OTs report.
If you are able to go private for assessment I'd just double check hse will accept report from who you choose to do it. Otherwise you'll still have to wait for hse assessment to get them to provide services.

yellow hen

We just had our private assessment today and it was great. He was diagnosed with spd (vestibular and proprioceptive). I thought I'd be devastated to have it confirmed but I actually feel so positive. Now we have an explanation for why our son is so clumsy and why he has a speech delay and we can work with the OT team. I feel like we've hit our bottom and this is the start of the way back up. It was well worth the €300 it cost.

galah

Yellow hen, that sounds great, congrats! Onwards and upwards!

I think the hse not accepting other diagnoses or making us jump through hoops may be a reason why our gp is reluctant to recommend anyone private (dunno, just guessing; he basically said the public system is the way to go, and so did the health nurse/community doc who did the dev check.)

Dont want to be putting our child through more assessments than necessary either - but a year's wait for an initial check is ridiculous (and even worse to hear that this is considered 'not to bad' :eek:). At 4, he also seems to fall through the cracks - too old for early intervention but not old enough yet for the school assessments it seems. Stupid frustrating system, really.:mad:

Thanks to everyone for replying though - we'll keep waiting and hopefully it'll all be sorted before he goes to college...

farmchoice

i can actually see why the HSE don't accept private reports. we had a similar problem with our lad although he was younger. he was lucky enough to be in the early intervention system but he was not a priority case and there were lots of staff shortages.

so we went to a private clinic which came highly recommended ( by a leading child psychologist in one the Dublin maternity hospitals). we were luck to get in, or so we were told by them.

anyway after a year of going i realized it was all a bit of a cod. it certainly did him no harm but it was really just the same services he was getting anyway. now of course we were lucky he was getting any services, many families are not. so if he had not been in the early intervention system it would have been somewhat valuable.

the problem with this particular clinic (the one i went to) and i see a pattern of this with others is that it becomes a constantly turning wheel of diagnosis and treatments (sensory issues being the BIG one at the moment).

so be a bit wary of these places they have a real incentive to keep you in their system. give yourself a cut off period with them. the penny dropped with me when the treatments started moving away from what might be considered mainstream to the alternative (homeopathy, sacro cranial etc).

if you find yourself being continuously tapped up for more and more treatments tests ect, then you need to ask questions.

Call me Al

Who told you that the HSE don't accept private diagnoses?
We had a private OT assessment for our eldest. The repot was accepted by our local HSE clinic for occupational therapy. We had to wait months for these few appointments to come through from the HSE, after submitting these reports, but they came eventually.
Now in saying this we also had an assessment thought the school, which in turn prompted the OT assessment, but neither of these two assessments were provided via HSE services.