Young Tipperary campaigner secures pledge to tackle autism assessment delays

“The brawl in the HSE hall is officially over,” said teenage campaigner Cara Darmody from county Tipperary after what she called a “massive success” in her meeting with HSE CEO Bernard Gloster in Limerick city on Tuesday, where she urged him to end delays in assessments of needs for autistic children.

Cara has secured a commitment from the HSE to launch a national recruitment drive for psychologists and therapists this September, in a move aimed at addressing the ongoing crisis in the assessment of needs for children with autism and disabilities.

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Speaking on The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk FM yesterday, the young student who attends Loreto Secondary School in Clonmel, said she told Mr Gloster "that the HSE are breaking the law and that they can't hide from that and that they shouldn't try to hide from that... He has to act urgently to stop breaking the law."

Cara claims the HSE is breaking the law by not assessing children within six months of the legal application. "I told him that they needed to start searching for more psychologists all around the country because what they're doing right now just simply isn't enough.

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Cara added that her meeting with Mr Gloster was a massive success. "I went in there with one main aim, which was to get the HSE CEO to basically score the country for more psychologists and therapist capacity and to finally get a handle on the assessment needs crisis. 

Speaking to Limerick Life, the Tipperary teenager said she provided Mr Gloster with evidence that a Tipperary psychologist is claiming that she could have completed 250 assessments of need in the last twelve months alone. 

"I also provided him with evidence of foreign companies who are willing to come to Ireland to solve the national picture. I wanted him to launch a national campaign totally different to what he's done previously."

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Cara asserted: "He admitted that putting it up on eTender on an obscure website is not the way to recruit people."