Sept 13, 2024, OceanFM: Mountcharles family with four autistic young adults say supports are completely inadequate
Patrick and Maria Brogan of Mountcharles in Donegal are the parents of four autistic young adults – Marty, Cassie, Daniel and Patrick. They’ve expressed their absolute frustration at the lack of supports and facilities in place for them, and say they’re considered merely as ‘add-ons’ in the eyes of the State
Radio interview
According to our next guest, the services are pretty much absent and not what they should be. They say the system needs to change, and people need to speak up and speak out on behave of the children and young adults involved. . . .
Patrick Brogan: We have four young adults with autism. One of them is 21, Marty. Cassie is 19. And the twins will be 18 in a couple of days. . . .
From around about three or four onwards they were diagnosed. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t hard. It is what it is. We’d love it to be better, but it’s not.
We have it better than some people, but not as good as what you want. . . .
You have to take up and start from scratch and try then to battle to get as much help and services as you can get.
Speech and language. No good for a child that’s nonverbal. For a child that’s verbal, it works brilliant, but when you have child that has no speech whatsoever, putting a book in front of him and trying to get him to say words is an absolute nightmare. . . .
There’s not a lot of speech. There’s no fighting over the remote control. . .
At the very start, the government services were a lot better. The services was there, but the understanding wasn’t there.
Now we have the understanding, but we don’t have the services. . . .
There’s over 500 families using the Bluestack Foundation. https://www.bluestackfoundation.com/ at the moment, and they can’t accommodate everybody. . . .
Two of our children have epilepsy as well. It can be a challenge. It seems to go with the territory, unfortunately. A lot of children with autism have epilepsy as well. . . .
Maria Brogan: The numbers are just increasing. They’re going to have the highest number next year coming on.
Patrick: It’s estimated that 23 percent of the child population, at the present moment, has a diagnosis of autism, ADD, ADHD, and the Belfast Trust has the prevalence and school age children with autism and Aspergers. And they estimate it to be one in 14.
One in 14 is two out of every big class. And every national school in the county of Donegal.
There’s something badly wrong. Autism was not there, and the numbers—
OceanFM: Was it not there, or did we just not hear about it?
Patrick: Well, they changed the diagnosis 20 years ago, and the diagnoses have only gone up. So if they changed it to make it a broader range, well that should have compensated for the numbers, but the numbers have only gone up.
So there’s something wrong. I don’t know what’s causing it. It’s gone up at a steady rate. Let it be Wi-Fi signal, let it be food, let it be the water, phone signals, chemicals.
I don’t know what’s causing it, but we as parents find it impossible to ask questions.
OceanFM: That’s one of your main frustrations, that you can’t ask questions.
What do you mean by that? Ask questions of whom? And what questions?
Patrick: Through the years, because of having the epilepsy with the children and all that, I’ve been in different hospitals at different times, and I often have conversations with different doctors, different consultants.
And four or five them told me, they can’t talk about it. If they do, they’re going to be struck off.
What’s that about? Why would they say something like that at the end of the day?
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