Feb 11, 2025, Waterford News: Waterford parents fight for education equality for their children
Parents of children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) are facing an uphill battle in Waterford.
As the September 2025 term looms, Déise parents are struggling to secure spaces that will properly accommodate their children’s needs.
Between benign statements of support from various Government members and mixed messaging from the Department of Education, these parents are at a loss as to how to ensure their child’s right to education.
Mothers Melissa and Jennifer spoke to the Waterford News & Star about the difficulties they’re facing. Both women are living either in or around the city, but have to go out of their jurisdiction for their children’s education.
Melissa’s daughter Harper is pre-verbal and turns five this year. Jennifer’s son TJ is six.
Both children attend school in Passage East, which offers Early Intervention classes.
In Waterford City, there are no Early Intervention classes for children with ASD.
Only two children in their class of seven have secured a place in primary school in Passage East this autumn. Neither of those places have been given to Melissa and Jennifer, so the search continues for both families.
Parents in the city and county are being told, often on the same day, that over 10 children are waiting for a spot in one school, while another school claims that the “demand isn’t there” for ASD modules.
Across the county, particularly in Dungarvan, parents of children with ASD are struggling on waiting lists with no guarantee of a place come September.
SENO and Funding
A Special Educational Needs Organiser (SENO) works on behalf of NEPS (National Education Psychological Service) to find spaces for children going into primary school.
As Jennifer said: “I know my SENO has been out to schools looking for places, they’re bent over backwards looking. Then schools are getting back to us saying that they can’t get the funding, Ferrybank can’t get the funding on a stop-and-go system.”
According to Melissa: “NEPS is over SENO; they have to go to NEPS and see what the demand is there for the school, and they release the funding.”
Parents are told that the schools they apply for are not structurally suited to accommodate their children.
Local councillor Jim Griffin spoke about how access to funding for structural developments to accommodate children with special needs is proving elusive to schools in Waterford. . . .
Cllr Griffin said that teachers and principals are “at loggerheads” over the issue.
“They all want to make it happen but there’s nothing happening.”
Jennifer said: “What we’d love, and I think every other parent would as well, is instead of getting a list from SENO every year with 20, 30 schools; one application.
“I think it’s imperative that every school in County Waterford should either have an ASD module or an ASD class. . . .
Principal at Portlaw National School Brian Barron spoke to Waterford News and Star about the issue and nodded to the issue of funding.
He said: “It’s not just an issue of special classes; it’s the whole underfunding of the special education sector.
“What the Government have to look at there is the provision of special schools, do they have enough places, and if not, why aren’t they expanding existing schools or building new schools?”
Lack of spaces
On the lack of spaces, Principal Barron said there was a backlog of applications.
“The issue has to be seen in its fullness where you have to consider the lack of spaces in special schools, first of all. That has a massive drip-down effect then where children who have a recommendation to be in a special school can’t get a special school place so they apply for a special class attached to a mainstream school.
“Those special classes may not be suitable for their needs.”
The demand for spaces has created a strange limbo where children with additional needs are applying for spaces that don’t exist.
He went on: “There’s a backlog of huge waiting lists of people applying to special schools who can’t get in, they’re then forced to apply for special classes, which there isn’t enough of, and they can’t get in there. But also children who do qualify for special classes are applying for those classes.”
Principal Barron stated that parents of children who qualify for special schools are left with no choice but to apply to a mainstream school.
He said: “Parents themselves know that their child won’t cope in a mainstream [school]. Mainstream schools are very adaptive but they’re not special schools.” . . .
With the coming school year, they are worried about how their children will adjust to a drastically new environment. For a child like TJ, entering a classroom of over 20 children would be an overwhelming experience.
Melissa said: “This flipside that we’re going to be facing in September, putting them into a schooling environment with or without an SNA (Special Needs Assistant); it’s physically not going to work.” . . .
Both parents have had to go private to access the right care and support for their children, paying upwards of €1,650 [$1,700] for the assessments that led to the ASD diagnosis alone.
Melissa said: “I had to put myself in debt to get my daughter assessed, to get her in an early intervention class.” . . .
"I ask the Minister of State to raise with his colleague, the Minister for Education, the urgent need to increase special school capacity in Dungarvan and west Waterford to ensure all children can access an education appropriate to their needs now and into the future."
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